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[Otakumegane]

That thread of not having to battle in RPGs got me thinking.

All too often in a turn-based RPG, I find my character or party following a very certain set of actions constantly, what is Auto-piloting or looping. My most recent instance with this was in Golden Sun, where during nearly every encounter I did spam AOE until 1 enemy, Attack times 3 + Heal. SMT4 during the later fights, Bravely Default all suffer from this. Granted until you run out of PP. Bosses are so much entertaining because of this, it gives you the chance to break the loop and actually try new sequences.

(I kind of think a lot of this tendency to enter these loops of least effort stem from how the game handles encounters itself and how taxing/frustratingly they handle it but that's another topic)

This just isn't fun gameplay. For too many games that have turn based battle systems there is a spammable least effort required loop of actions that almost guarantee victory with no challenge assuming you aren't underleveled. There's not enough differences between the normal enemies and their variations to pretty much do anything else and it limits potential of the battle system. I mentioned Bravely Default earlier and while the different combinations of job allow for a wider variety of loops, sooner or later you find the Time Mage+Valkyrie combo or Dark Nebula+Drain. Auto Battle setting and 4x speed eases the stress on people, but it doesn't solve the core problem that players can't be bothered enough to direct attention to the fight and just rely on a loop. All it does is allow the loop to go faster so there's more time for other stuff. Like administering painkillers for a broken bone/system and nothing other than that.

Some ways I found games addressing these.

-Go Action.
Xenoblade, FFXV, Nearly all recent WRPGs. Not exactly a solution but if the turn based isn't working anymore, make it more engaging by making it all action. Isn't my preferred option, I'd like turn-based to be improved as well. There are a lot of things that turn-based RPGs can do solely because they're turn-based.

- Punish Abuse.
SMT4 had some endgame monsters (where most of the fights became super loopy) that if you buffed your party too much or had too many resistances, they would cast 3 consecutive Megidolaon (almighty non-block/resistable attack). Spike dm in Xenoblade. These suck. This is implemented when the dev sees the flaws goes "oh fekk" and implements a last minute balance "addition" so people are discouraged to use what would usually mow down mobs. It's not rewarding what is technically good decisions with good outcomes.

-Variety + clearly defined roles
What is essential the Pokemon route. As surprising as it is, Pokemon's battle system is actually damn fine. Your party and the enemy party have lots of potential combinations, each Pokemon in both have VERY CLEAR STRENGTHS AND WEAKNESSES. Not just in stats but in typing and moveset. But then again you don't get a super-dedicated competitive community (and as far as I know one of the only ones in existence that stem from a mostly single player turn-based RPG) from a bad battle system. I mean yeah this is a system that has been worked on 20 years, and piling on variety and combinations throughout. Anyway, each Pokemon has a clear role, and depending matchup an ever changing selection of "optimal actions" based on a sort of complex rock paper scissor relationship. Gonna have a bad time if you stick to a loop here, it requires more conscious decision than most. Now this can be extremely costly to implement, require ungodly amounts of time, especially dealing with a party system. But it is amazing at engaging the player, esp at higher level play. (Now if only the single player modes had a hard mode at the start).

-Button Prompts
The Mario RPGs. They have some of the simplest battle systems out there, most of the time too easy to be taken seriously, but still manage to be more interactive than more complex systems because of these glorified QTEs that I shouldn't like but I can't help it alright I like pressing buttons fast until a bomb blows up. Enemies have different timings on attacks, and are just downright immune to damage on certain actions. This could be a sub category of the Go Action category.

-Speed it up
Auto-Battle, fast forward, encounter slider. Doesn't fix the problem but it should at least be the minimum required effort. Especially if non boss encounters just play out like a cutscene.

I don't think anything of the above is what I'd like to call ideal. I still enjoy having that deep combat system, but when most of the experience is inputting the same actions over and over, there's something realllly wrong here. I know more recent RPGs have been making efforts to combat this, but those appear to be tweaks rather than solutions. I want to be able to play a turn-based game, and continue to play it because of the engaging combat and not just for narrative, without starting to loop halfway through due to the lack of engagement the battle system brings.

From Extra Credits

What are some of the worst offenders to the spam?

How do we fix this?

 

[bathsalts]

My thoughts for fixing this are offering interesting environments, skills which become different based on those environments and enemies that require different strategies, Divinity: OS and XCOM come to mind as how it should be done. The problem is games dont introduce enough variables a lot of the time, its just your party vs a monster, nothing else.

 

[badcrumble]

Barring a discussion on the extent to which pattern-based enemies are or are not fun -

Ultimately, turn-based RPGs are all about a few things:
-how fast you're losing HP
-how fast you're dealing damage
-how fast you're using up vs. replenishing resources (items, MP, special attack bars, whatever)
-buff/debuff stuff

That can lead toward a battle system based really heavily on attrition - in which case high enough stats/good enough equipment make just about anything loopable - or a battle system based really heavily on single decisive turns.

Honestly, I'm sorta of the mind that ultimately anything stat-based is just about inevitably going to make stuff loopable (or, if it's really action-based, mashable). But assuming that issue can be avoided: the best thing really is for games going more action/attrition-heavy to radically decrease the degree to which your stats matter (i.e. going nearly *pure* action) so it's all about reflexes, and for games going more decisive-turn-heavy to *also* radically decrease the degree to which your stats matter and focus instead on smart ability use. Partly that means AI that's actually pretty reactive instead of just following a simple script, and partly that means making sure that no two enemies can be handled the same way.

Good AI would be stuff like: if you, the player, know to kill the enemy healer first, enemies should know that too.

 

[CrazyArcadia]

I find that in some games the solution is to keep the party at a pretty low level and not grind at all. Then, every encounter is a tactical battle where one has to exploit weaknesses and so on. There's lots of people who try to achieve low level or "one character" runs in RPGs to get out of this kind of situation of having the game play itself at some point. Not all RPGs allow to be played like that, unfortunately. There's probably a reason why some games are a bit dull within the genre...

Most RPGs seem to spam lots of similiar battle encounters towards the player in a short amount of time. So yeah, those will be looping after a while (even action-based games such as Xenoblade are often guilty of this). Sometimes I think those games are less about the battles and more about the preparation of a group and certain tactics. Remember Final Fantasy XII where with some thinking and leveling characters in a certain way, in the end the game could play itself in many areas. You succeed in having a balanced party which is good enough to just press the X button in battles. In that regard, I really like the Mario RPG-like approach OP also mentioned. I found this best implemented actually in Super Robot Wars OG: Endless Frontier with the almost fighting game like rhythm to pull off devastating combos with your party when the timing is right. Still, the encounters were quite similiar. But at least it was flashy and needed the player to be awake..

When talking turn-based battle systems, in recent memory I positively remember Radiant Historia and Divinity: Original Sin for giving every battle a strategic meaning. I agree with bathsalts: Especially Divinity OG with the interactive environment and hundreds of possibilities to survive or fail at a battle. Divinity OG also did have a great pacing because it wasn't only "fight fight fight" in dungeon runs and while exploring the world. Radiant Historia, this one I liked because of the importance of intelligent skill usage and the importance of placing the characters on the grid. Invited the player to experiment. edit: Also, Last Story had lots of interesting potential in that regard. edit2: And how could I forget the Grandia battle system. Now that was quite clever with the timeline and trying to keep the enemies from even being able to act through cleverly timed special attacks and skill usage.

Speed up is the reason why I can still dig something like Etrian Odyssey or Demon Gaze. Really, once one has found the right combination of characters, skills and equipment, most battles are piece of cake apart from the FOE/boss encounters. Thanks to the relative speed of the battles, it doesn't get problematic for me at least. On the other hand, encounters in Dragon Quest 8 and 9 are sooooooo slow. I mean, I love those games, but I wouldn't replay them for that reason whereas the DS remakes of 4,5,6 did it right with a much faster battle system.

 

[CrunchyFrog]

As you hinted at, more could be done in the Mario RPG/Paper Mario/M&L direction of more active participation in battles beyond just selecting commands and praying to the RNG gods. Add a bit of a skill curve to using commands/specific attacks with rewards for better execution (and not just more damage either). Paper Mario in particular also introduced environmental effects and hazards with the "audience" and stylish movesets.

Also do more with enemy/party/attack placement and targeting. Chrono Trigger had some neat ideas on this with target based AoE, line aimed attacks, and enemies moving around the field both erratically and in fixed patterns, making timing of the command just as important as the choice to use it. Radiant Historia also had a neat mechanic of not only enemy placement and attack choice but also the order of attack from both party members and enemies alike, channeling successive team attacks into effective combos. You could also look at some of the stuff being done in SRPG's and more tactical stuff like the latest XCOM games and pull some things from those, maybe battle rooms/fields which allow use or manipulation of the environment.

Then there's stuff noone's come up with yet. I think there's room for taking aspects of entirely separate genre's and spicing things up, think like Feep's game Sequence which adds in paradigms from the beat matching/rhythm genre.

EDIT: OH MAN how could I have possibly forgotten Child of Light! The specific focus on manipulation of the action bar and the simultaneous resource-based enemy-subduing companion mechanic made literally every fight an exercise in multilayered management. A beautiful RPG which doesn't get enough love here on GAF.

There's still TONS more that can be done in the turn based RPG mode, it's just a shame that so few developers are still exploring it.

 

[Krejlooc]

Instakill weak enemies like in mother, then allow for autobattle like in phantasy star 4.

 

[Robert at Zeboyd Games]

The combat system in our upcoming RPG, Cosmic Star Heroine, is specifically design to combat this.

With few exceptions, abilities can only be used once at a time. After abilities have been used, the character needs to use a recharge ability to refresh everything. This encourages the player to use all their chosen abilities and not just spam 1 ability over and over.

Characters also have hyper bars (different characters have different amounts) that fill up one/turn. When all hyper bars are full, all attacks that turn will deal double damage & ailments deal double ailment damage (aka more likely to succeed). This encourages the player to plan ahead to try to take advantage of the bonus.

Characters have a style score that affects damage (more style = more damage) - most abilities increase this while a handful of abilities will spend all style to increase their effect. Enemies also have a hidden style score that gradually increases as battle goes on. This results in a steady escalation as the battle continue and helps to prevent a heal/attrition loop on the player's part.

When we had the game playable at Playstation Experience, we got nothing but praised for the battle system. We released a gameplay video a while ago in case you want to see it in action: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2xwRduJKJwc

 

[Syril]

I think movement or positioning elements do a lot to keep battles from devolving into a loop simply because it keeps the best decision from being always the same. Even a really simple implementation like Shadow Hearts Covenant where the positions of enemies seem to change randomly between turns does a lot to make the battles less repetitive because you have stuff like "these two enemies are right next to each other, I can use an AoE spell right here".

 

[Mman235]

There's also the idea of having a smaller number of fixed encounters that can each be unique and more tailored to the party's abilities rather than falling into "solved" trash mob fights, but SRPG's seem to be the only ones to do that semi-regularly.

 

[Robert at Zeboyd Games]

There's also the idea of having a smaller number of fixed encounters that can each be unique and more tailored to the party's abilities rather than falling into "solved" trash mob fights, but SRPG's seem to be the only ones to do that semi-regularly.

Agreed. Having more carefully designed encounters that require thought on the player's part is a great way to avoid loops.

 

[More Fun To Compute]

Too many RPGs lean on player healing spam to cover up for loose design and it allows players to be lazy. You need a system that requires the player to be aware of what the weakness of the enemies are or what they need to do to be safe and open up a weakness in the future. Instead of instant recovery there should be more emphasis on active defence.

 

[Garrett Hawke]

It's interesting that you mention this considering I'm playing FFXIII-2 at the moment and I do really feel that I'm on autopilot. So much so that sometimes I'll find myself checking my phone during a cutscene because I've forgotten that I'm supposed to be paying attention. I am enjoying it though, and the battle system shines during boss battles

I can't really think of a single turn based RPG where this doesn't happen tho. Except maybe Fire Emblem, if that counts. But then I guess that's more of an SRPG.

I feel like one good idea would be lowering the number of actual encounters but making those encounters more meaningful/harder. So you feel like you're actually doing something instead of just spamming X until you've got more XP.

 

[Septimus Prime]

Make every encounter hard. The only realistic way to do this, I think, is to inhibit growth pretty hard. Maybe only allow the player to gain a handful of levels per zone, which will allow for the next zone to be hard if entered at max level but not frustratingly so if entered at a slightly lower level. I think Chrono Cross actually does this fairly well. It's just that the game's battle mechanics themselves were a bit boring and repetitive.

Personally, I tend to only have fun in RPGs with really hard fights. I always try to sequence break to get to harder areas sooner so I can face tougher enemies, but I don't do low level runs because it is more fun to have to use every trick in the book to survive, and I like to have all my options available. Realistically, though, with that kind of play style, that limits my fun fights to just a handful of end-game superbosses.

EDIT:

It's interesting that you mention this considering I'm playing FFXIII-2 at the moment and I do really feel that I'm on autopilot. So much so that sometimes I'll find myself checking my phone during a cutscene because I've forgotten that I'm supposed to be paying attention. I am enjoying it though, and the battle system shines during boss battles

I can't really think of a single turn based RPG where this doesn't happen tho. Except maybe Fire Emblem, if that counts. But then I guess that's more of an SRPG.

I feel like one good idea would be lowering the number of actual encounters but making those encounters more meaningful/harder. So you feel like you're actually doing something instead of just spamming X until you've got more XP.

XIII-2 is actually a really good example of doing it wrong, I think, even though the DLC gave me lots of fun fights. The way they open up most of the world right off the bat kind of forces them to have a near-flat difficulty progression, where it starts too hard and then becomes way too easy.

 

[Steel]

You can only auto-pilot SMT and Persona battles when you outclass your enemy sufficiently. In most cases in these games you're going to want to figure out elemental weaknesses and use your skills. Final Fantasy games are the ones guilty of attack attack heal loops.

 

[RedSwirl]

If you HAVE to have combat, then really, just make an interesting combat system. If you enjoy the combat system, then even grinding isn't a problem anymore.

Really though, I just like to have real-time-with-pause, without any battle transitions. You get a cohesive game world without any breaks in gameplay, but you can pause to strategize whenever you want. I think it's the best of both worlds and let's you operate combat at whatever pace you want.

 

[BassForever]

I feel like this is generally true of a lot of RPGs not just turned based, I think it's just more noticeable in the world of turned based games because you have time to think about what you're doing and it's much easier to set up a pattern of success that will always work without fail.

You can only auto-pilot SMT and Persona battles when you outclass your enemy sufficiently. In most cases in these games you're going to want to figure out elemental weaknesses and use your skills. Final Fantasy games are the ones guilty of attack attack heal loops.

I can't comment about the SMT games, but at least in P3 FES and P4/P4G it's very noticeable that pattern you get into. Whatever a boss does on their turn you respond in a way that gets your party back into a condition where they won't die from the next attack while dealing as much damage as possible. Heck bosses like the reaper in P3 FES are more or less designed to be killed by looping them.

 

[Steel]

If you HAVE to have combat, then really, just make an interesting combat system. If you enjoy the combat system, then even grinding isn't a problem anymore.

Really though, I just like to have real-time-with-pause, without any battle transitions. You get a cohesive game world without any breaks in gameplay, but you can pause to strategize whenever you want. I think it's the best of both worlds and let's you operate combat at whatever pace you want.

Eh, even in most real time with pause RPGs the common fights are trivial. I personally prefer boss fights in full turn based because you're just gonna end up pausing a ton in a real-time with pause game if the boss fight's decent.

I can't comment about the SMT games, but at least in P3 FES and P4/P4G it's very noticeable that pattern you get into. Whatever a boss does on their turn you respond in a way that gets your party back into a condition where they won't die from the next attack while dealing as much damage as possible. Heck bosses like the reaper in P3 FES are more or less designed to be killed by looping them.

I wasn't even talking about bosses, the OP talks about random encounters. But yes, there's a loop to bosses in Persona, but many of the bosses change up their patterns and you have to use debuffs, guard and sometimes a variety of elements if the boss has a shift or lackeys so there's more to the loop than other games.

 

[TC McQueen]

Actually having map design would help some SRPGs, namely ones that are just flat, top-down POV games. Most of the time the map is huge just to make it hard for you to get all your units to enemies/objectives and kill them all, instead of actually making positioning a tactical/strategic element.

Also, if you've got a mecha game like SD Gundam Generation, perhaps allow people to pick what weapons units have, instead of sticking every possible gun on it, which would allow for role differentiation instead of all the units blurring together because almost all units have the same or similar offensive ability.

Also, adding non-attack abilities that can help change the tide of battle, like in XCOM: Enemy Unknown, can help avoid the loop.

 

[birdchili]

a few things:

make fights diminish resources that don't replenish after the fight. each excursion from civilization should be a slow depletion of resources trying to get to the next safe-haven. this way fights aren't about winning, they're about winning *optimally*, which means the differences between enemies are emphasized.

give enemies the ability to ruin your strategy via status-ailments, positioning, or terrain. if you're in damage-control mode, you can't be executing on whatever "loop" you'd ideally use for a given encounter.

 

[BrokenIcarus]

Good Thread! I really hope more devs implement some of these to make RPGs more interesting!

 

[Purple Cheeto]

Make more combat like Breath of Fire Dragon Quarter.

 

[Mandoric]

You're reading the loop as an encounter composed of interactionless attack, interactionless attack, interactionless heal, interactionless attack, interactionless block, repeat. The loop is management-sim-style delve composed of encounters that you solve with simple combos, the components of which have no more or less interaction than standard "punch" or "block" buttons.

The weakness is extremely lenient tuning combined with a (societal? need-for-security based?) urge to only progress when failure is unthinkable. There's no hook without the "can I survive this dungeon?" question, and when the only fanbase remaining demands features like purely optional encounters, that's dead too.

This isn't to say there aren't other loops possible, but the reaction to FF13's SaGa-derived style suggests that that it won't go over any better either.

 

[threelights]

FFXIII suffered very little from that actually, since during the linear part of the game they will always limit what you have and thus fights become more challenging and forces you to use specific abilities. And then when the game opens up a little more the difficulty increases a lot and you are forced to use all of your skills.

It's actually one of the main benefits of having a linear game (and something that got almost completely lost in XIII-2)

But basically there's two ways to combat that, there's the way of implementing a bunch of systems to stop looping (like FFXIII), and there's the ways of adding another element to the battle (like positioning in Chrono Trigger or action commands in Mario).

Another way is to just increase the difficulty of the game. FFXII has an extremely dull battle system thanks to Gambits (which I love btw), but when you're fighting hunts and you're not overleveled, then the fight is fun simply because it's hard and you have to manage by yourself. That however is not a great way to keep people playing a game for 60+ hours imo.

 

[AlterOdin]

Darkest Dungeon has an interesting approach.

As I understand it (not sure); each character has a speed attribute + a random roll to speed each turn, where speed determines who goes first (and maybe twice?). Shit can hit the fan pretty quick with unfortunate rolls.

 

[kinaesthete]

As many people above me already mentioned, having movement, positioning, and terrain navigation goes a very long way in making individual battles more interesting. Having repeated enemy types appearing in different combinations and spatial contexts forces you to strategize and not fall back to auto-pilot for 90% of scrub encounters like most RPGs. Divinity: OS is the best example of this I'm aware of, and it looks like BOF: Dragon Quarter has similar things going on (I just started playing it).

As far as different kind of loops go, I was discussing similar problems with some buddies over an FF12 stream recently and noticed another loop that seems common to almost every party based RPG, focus firing on individual enemies with your whole group to reduce overall enemy damage output. I'm not sure if there are any games that go out of their way to subvert that tactic, or even if it would be a good idea since it's a logical solution and trying to get around it might require some weird contrived mechanics.

There's also the question of whether each battle needs to be interesting or significant on its own, or to consider a stretch of dungeon area from one save point to the next the "encounter", making survival more about long term resource management than tactics in individual fights...

 

[Syril]

As far as different kind of loops go, I was discussing similar problems with some buddies over an FF12 stream recently and noticed another loop that seems common to almost every party based RPG, focus firing on individual enemies with your whole group to reduce overall enemy damage output. I'm not sure if there are any games that go out of their way to subvert that tactic, or even if it would be a good idea since it's a logical solution and trying to get around it might require some weird contrived mechanics.

Grandia subverts it pretty well since there are reliable ways to prevent or mitigate enemies' attacks. You can see what every enemy is about to do and who they're targeting, so if you have an opportunity you can cancel it with special attacks and make them lose their turn or defend against it. Any time one of your characters gets a turn there's usually something they can do to disrupt the enemies' efforts, and focus firing is usually not the best idea because it just gives the other enemies free hits.

 

[Otakumegane]

I've been hearing a lot about Radiant Historia, how does that game handle this?

 

[Morrigan Stark]

Thought Skyborn handled this pretty well, at least on Hard mode. Each character had specific abilities, almost all of which were useful but were not necessarily always used in the same sequence because each encounter was meaningful.

 

[Septimus Prime]

FFXIII suffered very little from that actually, since during the linear part of the game they will always limit what you have and thus fights become more challenging and forces you to use specific abilities. And then when the game opens up a little more the difficulty increases a lot and you are forced to use all of your skills.

It's actually one of the main benefits of having a linear game (and something that got almost completely lost in XIII-2)

But basically there's two ways to combat that, there's the way of implementing a bunch of systems to stop looping (like FFXIII), and there's the ways of adding another element to the battle (like positioning in Chrono Trigger or action commands in Mario).

Another way is to just increase the difficulty of the game. FFXII has an extremely dull battle system thanks to Gambits (which I love btw), but when you're fighting hunts and you're not overleveled, then the fight is fun simply because it's hard and you have to manage by yourself. That however is not a great way to keep people playing a game for 60+ hours imo.

As many people above me already mentioned, having movement, positioning, and terrain navigation goes a very long way in making individual battles more interesting. Having repeated enemy types appearing in different combinations and spatial contexts forces you to strategize and not fall back to auto-pilot for 90% of scrub encounters like most RPGs. Divinity: OS is the best example of this I'm aware of, and it looks like BOF: Dragon Quarter has similar things going on (I just started playing it).

As far as different kind of loops go, I was discussing similar problems with some buddies over an FF12 stream recently and noticed another loop that seems common to almost every party based RPG, focus firing on individual enemies with your whole group to reduce overall enemy damage output. I'm not sure if there are any games that go out of their way to subvert that tactic, or even if it would be a good idea since it's a logical solution and trying to get around it might require some weird contrived mechanics.

There's also the question of whether each battle needs to be interesting or significant on its own, or to consider a stretch of dungeon area from one save point to the next the "encounter", making survival more about long term resource management than tactics in individual fights...

One of the things I thought was really novel about FFXII (and to a lesser extent FFXIII) is that the battles are less about the battles themselves and more about management. It is amazing that Libra--a move that's been basically useless for most of the FF series--actually changes the AI of your teammates in FFXIII. Like, you learn your enemy's weakness, and then all of a sudden your teammates start to favor that element instead of trying other moves and seeing what sticks. This I felt was a major component missing from XIII-2.

Meanwhile, XII's battle systems were so automated that all the battles really took place in the preparation for them. The license board element is cool, and it was also fun to really examine the attributes of various equipment to really get the most out of your gear. Personally, I remember winning a lot of earlier fights that I shouldn't have been able to by taking advantage of combining various shields with the Main Gauche dagger, which gives you a 35% evasion/blocking bonus, and I also remember a late game battle that I won by kiting a powerful boss while blasting at it with guns. Fights like those are fun and memorable.

 

[Meffer]

I've been hearing a lot about Radiant Historia, how does that game handle this?

Grid-based battles. The enemy side is 3X3 tiles, the farther back they are the less damage they do to you but you also do less damage to them. When they're closer to the front they do more damage but they also take more damage. Most of your moves can push and drag them throughout the grid, some moves are traps as well meaning enemies will take damage if they are in that tile. The idea is to put the enemies in the same tile and then do a powerful attack on them.

You want to do this since you do not want to drag the battle on for too long.

 

[Otakumegane]

Grid-based battles. The enemy side is 3X3 tiles, the farther back they are the less damage they do to you but you also do less damage to them. When they're closer to the front they do more damage but they also take more damage. Most of your moves can push and drag them throughout the grid, some moves are traps as well meaning enemies will take damage if they are in that tile. The idea is to put the enemies in the same tile and then do a powerful attack on them.

You want to do this since you do not want to drag the battle on for too long.

Sounds to me like its worth checking out. $23 on Amazon eh.

Love it when RPGs use positioning and movement.

 

[Basileus777]

The best way is generally to add a meaningful tactical/positioning element. Design it more like an actual strategy game.

 

[Watch Da Birdie]

Here's an idea I thought of the other day, involving a "Boss/Minion" RPG system, that'd sort of mix things up in a turn-based game...

The main party member is the most durable, and valuable, character who can survive the longest, but is very basic and can't do anything except basic attacks and defends.

However, you have a large amount of party members with you at each time...expanding as the game goes on...each with much more varied abilities, and items, to help you in each fight. The only problem is that they're very weak---often only lasting one or two fights, and they can only use their abilities and items a few times.

So, throughout the exploration, Random Battles would be different each time and more interesting as you'd need to pick and choose what party members to use, and who to save for the harder enemies and boss. You can't just use the same shit each go-around, because then you'll have nothing useful left when you reach the Boss.

 

[Chrono Helix]

Here's an idea I thought of the other day, involving a "Boss/Minion" RPG system, that'd sort of mix things up in a turn-based game...

The main party member is the most durable, and valuable, character who can survive the longest, but is very basic and can't do anything except basic attacks and defends.

However, you have a large amount of party members with you at each time...expanding as the game goes on...each with much more varied abilities, and items, to help you in each fight. The only problem is that they're very weak---often only lasting one or two fights, and they can only use their abilities and items a few times.

So, throughout the exploration, Random Battles would be different each time and more interesting as you'd need to pick and choose what party members to use, and who to save for the harder enemies and boss. You can't just use the same shit each go-around, because then you'll have nothing useful left when you reach the Boss.

Sounds a little like Devil Summoner on the 3DS.

As far as different kind of loops go, I was discussing similar problems with some buddies over an FF12 stream recently and noticed another loop that seems common to almost every party based RPG, focus firing on individual enemies with your whole group to reduce overall enemy damage output. I'm not sure if there are any games that go out of their way to subvert that tactic, or even if it would be a good idea since it's a logical solution and trying to get around it might require some weird contrived mechanics.

This is typically subverted by having those battles where you fight two or more enemies, and if you kill one the others get powered up, or if you fail to kill them simultaneously the survivors will revive the slain ones.

 

[sgjackson]

I would argue that in-game Pokemon also falls victim to this issue with some regularity, even if the loop is slightly more complicated. The loop is:

-Ascertain opposing Pokemon's weakness.
-Switch to appropriate Pokemon if needed.
-Use move of proper type for super effective hit until it faints.

Over 90 percent of the trash fights and most of the bosses in the game are easily overcome by doing this, especially when you learn to read opposing trainer sprites to figure out what sort of trainer they are and can guess what their first Pokemon might be. The exceptions are

-Harder bosses: Bosses with massive level discrepancies (primarily the Elite 4) usually require some degree of clever decision making (item abuse, status and buff use) to overcome with minimal grinding. We see an extreme version of this with the Battle Tower, where coming up with smart ways to overcome the RNG is arguably more important than the rock/paper/scissors system that is the basis of normal Pokemon fighting.
-Catching other Pokemon: Requiring you to NOT kill something is clever, even if that means critical hits become a major, unfun problem. Legendary Pokemon are an extreme example of this and their low catch rates, while breaking the loop in a largely unique way, are not very fun.

The depth comes from team construction, which seems outside of the scope of your post. A poorly constructed team will require some smart, loop-breaking decision making, but careful study of a type-chart makes it trivial to cover every type combination if you're willing to min/max.

The biggest advantage of Pokemon's battle system is the depth it enables in competitive multiplayer, which I'd argue is a bigger achievement than breaking the loop.

 

[Mandoric]

Also, the idea of "escaping" a loop is pretty absurd. Every genre has its core gameplay loop, and every game should probably focus on repeating a set of actions that's fun. You can argue that a particular loop's broken, but the idea that something shouldn't be repeated is anti-mastery and only achievable by creating a oneshot theme-park ride.

 

[Gsnap]

I think it might help if you get rid of weaknesses/strengths. Or at least one dimensional weaknesses and strengths.

If enemy X is weak to lightning, then you're just going to lightning them all the time.

An enemy weak to lightning is also fundamentally the same as an enemy weak to fire because basic fire and lightning attacks have no difference other than their animation most of the time. And then there's the problem of getting firaga or some garbage like that, which is no different from regular fire expect it does more damage and has a fancier animation.

Attacks need to have variable effects. Enemies need to have variable reactions to different attacks or abilities. Instead of having an enemy that is immune to defense down, have an enemy that the player can lower its defense, but then it become enraged and its attack raises. So you can do it, but under certain circumstances you may not want to do it.

Positioning needs to be important. And skill-based bonuses like Paper Mario are always a plus.

Also, the idea of "escaping" a loop is pretty absurd. Every genre has its core gameplay loop, and every game should probably focus on repeating a set of actions that's fun. You can argue that a particular loop's broken, but the idea that something shouldn't be repeated is anti-mastery and only achievable by creating a oneshot theme-park ride.

In real-time, action based games, yes. But in turn-based games it doesn't really work the same way. Repetition of actions in a turn-based system can't really be inherently fun because the player's actions will always amount to menu navigation regardless of what the characters are doing. Unlike a game like Mario, which actually has physicality to it, the only thing stimulating in a turn-based system is the mental thought put into strategies and the fun of seeing cool attack animations. So, doing the same loop over and over becomes much less stimulating at a much faster rate than playing the same mario level over again.

There's nothing fun about solving the same puzzle over and over again in the same way.

 

[Nyoro SF]

I think it might help if you get rid of weaknesses/strengths. Or at least one dimensional weaknesses and strengths.

If enemy X is weak to lightning, then you're just going to lightning them all the time.

An enemy weak to lightning is also fundamentally the same as an enemy weak to fire because basic fire and lightning attacks have no difference other than their animation most of the time. And then there's the problem of getting firaga or some garbage like that, which is no different from regular fire expect it does more damage and has a fancier animation.

Attacks need to have variable effects. Enemies need to have variable reactions to different attacks or abilities. Instead of having an enemy that is immune to defense down, have an enemy that the player can lower its defense, but then it become enraged and its attack raises. So you can do it, but under certain circumstances you may not want to do it.

Positioning needs to be important. And skill-based bonuses like Paper Mario are always a plus.

I completely agree with this. Unless enemies with weaknesses are properly mixed together (almost never) there is no point in assigning them.

Variable positioning needs to matter and tactics should be rewarded over direct destruction.

 

[Otakumegane]

I think it might help if you get rid of weaknesses/strengths. Or at least one dimensional weaknesses and strengths.
.

I think the exact opposite to this. No weaknesses creates that feel of non-interaction and not responding based on the enemy. If anything else weaknesses need to be super clear and their strengths even clearer. So that a simple loop or set of actions runs into a wall real quick.

Agree 100% with the rest. Positioning and incentivising engagement and not zoning out is really key here.

 

[CanUKlehead]

Definitely agree that an encounter slider and auto battle are minimum requirements. It's the only reason Bravely Default didn't drive me completely insane.

Otherwise, to be honest, I don't mind dumb and easy battles in my RPGs. I'm sure I'm in the minority here.

I don't mind it that in 75% of my fights, I can just mash attack (or auto). Sure, it's not as engaging, but that's probably why I've started to get into visual novels and Telltale games--I don't care about the battles, I just want the story (however laughable that reads!). I grind cause I want the boss battle to take 3 minutes, not 30, and I can just lie back, listen to a podcast while grinding, and shut off my brain during these sessions.

Some standouts for me though:

FFVI: I could very well be misremembering, but I very rarely used anyone's special abilities, outside of attacks against multiple targets (Edgar's autocrossbow, magic). Sure, I tried each characters unique attacks (Gau's was particuarly unique, I thought), but ultimately, I guess I got bored.

FFX: I liked the swapping system enough, where you need the right attacker for a specific situation, but felt too gimmicky (Which I suppose these all are).

Radiant Historia: I remember enjoying the grid system, and how you can push and pull enemies to increase damage or hit multiple targets. Good fun.

Persona 4: I actually found the hit and miss-type battles annoying, where the weaknesses aren't often sensical, and you're forced to cycle through your elemental types. Again, it's cause they don't really give you a clue (far as I can tell); I didn't mind elemental-match-type attacks in Chrono Trigger for example.

FFXII: The system I didn't know I wanted. I loved the gambit/ADB combo of setting things up pre-exploration, letting your guys go, and adjusting when needed.

Yeah...I'm damn lazy with my RPGs.

 

[Gsnap]

I think the exact opposite to this. No weaknesses creates that feel of non-interaction and not responding based on the enemy. If anything else weaknesses need to be super clear and their strengths even clearer. So that a simple loop or set of actions runs into a wall real quick.

Under more complex circumstances, sure.

That's why I said I think one dimensional weaknesses are bad. By giving attacks multiple effects, enemies can be weak to something under one circumstance, but not under another. Imagine an enemy that is strong against all magic when it has its shield, but when it's shield is gone it's weak against magical attacks. Then consider one of your characters is a big mace wielder who has a shield breaking ability. So that character breaks the shield, then magic wielders can use strong attacks against the enemy. Then consider a system that actually takes positioning into account. The character with the shield is in a forest. Only basic attacks work in the forest, because, well, I don't feel like thinking of a reason right now, so your mace wielder can't break his shield. So you have to find a way to get him out of the forest. Maybe fire can burn it? Maybe an attack can push him? Yadda, yadda.

That's far more interesting than "Goo Blob is always weak against fire. Always use fire on Goo Blob."

 

[Mandoric]

In real-time, action based games, yes. But in turn-based games it doesn't really work the same way. Repetition of actions in a turn-based system can't really be inherently fun because the player's actions will always amount to menu navigation regardless of what the characters are doing. Unlike a game like Mario, which actually has physicality to it, the only thing stimulating in a turn-based system is the mental thought put into strategies and the fun of seeing cool attack animations. So, doing the same loop over and over becomes much less stimulating at a much faster rate than playing the same mario level over again.

There's nothing fun about solving the same puzzle over and over again in the same way.

There's plenty fun about solving the same general type of puzzle over and over with new factors worked in each time, or about making a bid ("I bet I can clear this dungeon at level 15 rather than 17!") and winning. The problem isn't turn-based systems, the problem is the perception that individual battles are equivalent to an action game boss fight or a P&D board rather than an action game combo or an individual match-3 (or more).

 

[Elaugaufein]

Skill / Timing based systems suck for those of us who play turn based games to avoid that stuff and I'm not personally a fan.

Escalating enemy damage (exclusively) is one way of doing it but it has its own problems , in that it may tip the fight in the enemies favor to fast.

The best way I've seen to avoid loops is to change the way resource management focuses.

The standard turn based formula is that everything you do is about managing resources for the next boss fight, and that there's a reasonable break between them. This tends to lead to very samey weak fights in between, since if those fights are overly challenging , you'll die from attrition.

Some games avoid this by changing things up the way management works, either dividing up the attrition between random and boss encounters (by providing a healing point before each boss) or by healing after every battle, these methods let you make the battles a bit more challenging. The problem is that when this is done creating memorable boss battles becomes that much harder and there's a tendency to make them a bit gimmicky.

 

[Gsnap]

There's plenty fun about solving the same general type of puzzle over and over with new factors worked in each time, or about making a bid ("I bet I can clear this dungeon at level 15 rather than 17!") and winning. The problem isn't turn-based systems, the problem is the perception that individual battles are equivalent to an action game boss fight or a P&D board rather than an action game combo or an individual match-3 (or more).

Yeah, but that's not really what the OP is talking about. If those new factors bring something new enough that it changes the loop the OP is talking about, then we don't have a problem.

If they don't (which they often don't), then it isn't stimulating.

Either way, I think your argument is flawed to begin with because the loop we're talking about isn't the same as the game's "core gameplay loop".

The core gameplay loop of turn-based systems is (usually): Explore, Fight, Level Up, Explore, Fight, Level Up, etc.

That's not the same as using attack, attack, heal over and over in an loop that is in no way stimulating or fun.

 

[Basileus777]

The problem isn't turn-based systems, the problem is the perception that individual battles are equivalent to an action game boss fight or a P&D board rather than an action game combo or an individual match-3 (or more).

There's a reason they are perceived differently, the pacing couldn't be more different. A turned based battle generally takes quite a bit more time than a single match 3 or action game combo.

 

[autoduelist]

I hate when combat is boring; it's often a sign of bad design -- either overly simplistic combat systems, or bad enemy design, or dungeon/quest design that's imbalanced and easily leads to overleveling.

Some things that work well:

1) Enemy 'tells' where you need to actually pay attention to the enemy to know when and how they might strike.

2) Enemies that show no mercy -- death should come quick to those who spam attacks w/o paying attention. For example, an enemy fighter in a defensive pose might be able to parry and disarm / instant-critical any fighter who attacks him.

3) As mentioned, some sort of positional system adds a lot.

4) keeping challenge consistent. this one is hard (well, really, they all are). You need either some sort of grind-prevention system in place to prevent players from overleveling, or, you need to provide some sort of 'endless challenge' that allows players to fight to their ability (disgaea games are a good example of this, or anything like that).

5) Options must be important. I get by in most games without even using potions to heal, etc... I should be forced into considering all my options on a regular basis. Nethack and other roguelikes are probably the perfect example of this, where time and time again you'll know if you simply attack again you're dead, and you study your situation, equipment, potions, etc, looking for some other way to survive.

 

[Koozek]

The combat system in our upcoming RPG, Cosmic Star Heroine, is specifically design to combat this.

With few exceptions, abilities can only be used once at a time. After abilities have been used, the character needs to use a recharge ability to refresh everything. This encourages the player to use all their chosen abilities and not just spam 1 ability over and over.

Characters also have hyper bars (different characters have different amounts) that fill up one/turn. When all hyper bars are full, all attacks that turn will deal double damage & ailments deal double ailment damage (aka more likely to succeed). This encourages the player to plan ahead to try to take advantage of the bonus.

Characters have a style score that affects damage (more style = more damage) - most abilities increase this while a handful of abilities will spend all style to increase their effect. Enemies also have a hidden style score that gradually increases as battle goes on. This results in a steady escalation as the battle continue and helps to prevent a heal/attrition loop on the player's part.

When we had the game playable at Playstation Experience, we got nothing but praised for the battle system. We released a gameplay video a while ago in case you want to see it in action: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2xwRduJKJwc

Oh, nice! Curious to try it out. I'll watch later.


I've been in the recent threads about JRPG battle systems, too, and the more I think about it the more I realize that all my most favorite battle systems reduced the tediousness and mindless auto-battling by incorporating real-time, timing-based elements (Shadow Hearts, Paper Mario or Lightning Returns) or additional luck-based ones (Baten Kaitos). It just keeps you engaged and involved all the time.
I have some ideas for an eventual, small game I want to make. It's really fun thinking about ways to streamline or break old JRPG conventions and instead of throwing speed-up and auto-battles on everything we should rather encourage new ideas to make battles strategic AND dynamic

 

[dhlt25]

If I have my wish every game would have divinity OS battle system lol. Make encounter sparse but all meaningful and hard. Use the environment to help spice up the battles.

 

[Two Words]

Make enemies learn from your strategy,. That way, the more an attack is overused, the less effective it becomes. The loss in effectiveness would not be perminent.

 

[Robert at Zeboyd Games]

Another thing you can do to help avoid this that Final Fantasy 4 did well is keep changing up the player's party. If the player's "tools" keep changing, it's more difficult for them to fall into a rut.