Author: Mark Vanderploeg

Having a story in a video game is a great way to hold player engagement, however, a better way to hold player engagement is to tie the narrative to the gameplay. In my game, Draconic Echoes: The Ardent War, I tried to do this as much as possible.

First and foremost, the magic element system I have discussed in previous posts, the one where certain magic elements cause others to do more damage (like how water spells can cause following lightning spells to do more damage), is guided by somewhat of a “narrative.” It’s not the overall plot in this case, but the game mechanics do follow the general real-world aspects of the spells. So here, magic combat in the game has a somewhat narrative feel to it.

In a more specific case, there is a side quest in the game where the player party has the chance to sneak up on some ogres. If the player chooses to knock over some torches onto the ogres’ tents, then the player can initiate combat against the groups of ogres with a reduced number of enemies and full TP (a resource that allows powerful moves), in addition to the enemies not being able to attack until they are attacked. These mechanical advantages represent the real-world advantages the party would gain through the distraction of a fire blazing around the enemy camp.

Another side quest in the game where narrative shines through game mechanics is the quest in the “Miasmic Caves,” where the player must collect and consume “Pure Sprigs” so that they can be temporarily immune to the cave’s titular miasma. Mechanically, the miasma significantly increases the damage that the player party takes, so it is essential that the player remains aware of the narrative miasma and its in-game mechanics.

Now, after explaining this cross between narrative and mechanics, one might ask the following question. Why bother? Well, interaction with the game’s narrative in an RPG is one of the main reasons players play RPGs. So the more you can provide them with chances to do so, the better. Also, another big reason is to cut any sort of feeling that the player is doing the same grind over and over, and following the narrative of the environment and/or the situation allows more mechanics to emerge, reducing the feeling and actuality of repetition.

As a rule of thumb for my quests that weren’t all that significant to the central plot, I asked myself, “What makes this quest different?” or, “What are some reasons that someone could have for deeming this quest their favorite?” If I can’t answer either of these questions for a certain quest, then I know that quest needs more attention. In other words, put your quests in a competitive environment in your head, like trying to get views on platforms like Twitch. All of the quests should be about equally engaging in one way or another. Each quest needs something to garner attention, and using the narrative to create that special something is a great method.

If you’re curious about how all my nonsense actually plays out in a game, check out Draconic Echoes: The Ardent War on Steam!

Difficulty settings are a large way to expand a game’s appeal to encompass a wider audience. When implemented correctly, these settings allow people who seek challenges in games, people who use games to relax, and everyone in between to all enjoy the same game. However, it is easy to fall into the pitfalls of lazy difficulty implementation, especially in hard modes.

When I was designing Draconic Echoes: The Ardent War, one of the biggest pitfalls I wanted to try to avoid was “damage sponging” in the hard difficulty. From what I’ve been able to determine, this arises when a hard mode just increases enemy stats such as HP pools and damage to introduce difficulty. But this often results in a tedious experience where the player just has to hammer away at the combat longer, and it isn’t necessarily any harder at the end of the day. What I believe truly provides a hard mode experience is having the player follow the game’s core mechanics more tightly. That is, the players should have to deeply engage with the game in order to succeed. Of course, higher damage and slightly higher HP pools could be a means to that end, but enemy stat increases cannot be the only difference in difficulty, lest the hard mode becomes a damage sponge ridden snore fest.

Now, I’d like to explain what I have done in Draconic Echoes: The Ardent War to help illustrate my point. Its hard mode does NOT have any blanket stat increases for the enemies. There are only a few instances where stats are increased in the harde mode of the game, and it is when specific additional hard mode mechanics temporarily increase enemy stats. Instead, I chose to lower player character base stats. At first, this may seem to be doing essentially the same thing, and on the surface it is. It increases damage done and received by the player party. However, there is a key difference here. Player stats can be augmented by equipment such as weapons and armor, and stat builds (“Training” in the case of this game). Decreasing the base stats of the player characters emphasizes stats gained from other sources, which makes finding good gear and creating good stat builds more necessary for success. Players who choose to engage with these systems have more options in tackling the hard mode, and they are presented a more entertaining challenge than “hit this glorified damage sponge for twenty minutes.”

Another thing I added to the hard mode of Draconic Echoes: The Ardent War was the “Malicious Release Timer” or turn limits for boss fights. These timers are by no means tight for experienced players, but they do punish players for ignoring the core combat mechanics. In my mind, boss timers do two things. They contribute, as I just mentioned, a motivation to learn and consistently use the game’s mechanics. And they add a small worry to the back of the player’s mind during the fights. There’s always a small urge to take risks, sometimes necessary, and sometimes unnecessary, when timed. It then becomes the player’s job to make judgments on those urges and act accordingly. Because some of the game’s core mechanics mildy play off of risk-reward decision making, adding boss timers just made sense. (As a side note: there’s always a big sense of relief and accomplishment when the player defeats a difficult boss right when the timer runs out and the game tells them something that translates to “you’re going to die next turn.” So that’s another plus).

Lastly, the final key difference in Draconic Echoes: The Ardent War’s hard mode is “Malicious Actions” or extra/upgraded abilities that bosses can only use in hard mode. Extra abilities have been around for a while. For examples of this outside my game, see the difference between raid fight difficulties in games such as World of Warcraft. Adding extra abilities is a chance for the designer to go harder on the mechanical or narrative theme of a boss fight. To be as spoiler evasive as possible, one of the fights in Draconic Echoes: The Ardent War focuses on draining player mana (MP) instead of dealing raw HP damage, hoping to run the player out of resources. In the normal and easy modes, it’s not really a huge threat. However, on hard mode, the mana drain is more intense and the added ability relies on the expectations that the player will use a certain core mechanic in order to reduce it to manageable levels. In order to the adding of more mechanical depth, extra abilities can just be used to increase the raw damage output of an enemy, without relying on blanketing stat increases (which, not to mention, may cause balancing nightmares in and of themselves).

Overall, creating a hard mode is a difficult balancing act itself. Most of the time, it cannot be a mere raw enemy stat increase. Making sure new mechanics or additions on existing mechanics tie into the core of the game is key to creating a compelling hard difficulty.

If you’re curious about how all my nonsense actually plays out in a game, check out Draconic Echoes: The Ardent War on Steam!

**Spoiler Warning** The following post may contain spoilers for:
Draconic Echoes: The Ardent War

Finding a place to start when writing, whether it be creative or otherwise, can be quite a challenge. I find that having an overarching theme to the narrative can be a very helpful tool in overcoming writer’s blocks or coming up with concepts for the narrative in general. Relating many aspects of your narrative to a theme helps to create a more cohesive story as a whole. And no, I’m not talking about going as far as creating a socially impactful message or some universal truth that students must so often try to pick out in high school English class (unless you really want to, or you do have a message in mind). What I really mean is to have a general concept that can be explored throughout the story. Perhaps it would be easier to explain through examples.

The primary theme of Draconic Echoes: The Ardent War is “duality,” or the coexistence of opposites. The following poem is my inspiration for using this theme:

“odi et amo quare id faciam fortesse requiris

nescio sed fieri sentio et excrucior”

Catullus, Poema LXXXV

Or, in English:

“I hate, and I love. Perhaps you ask why I do this?

I do not know. But I feel it come into being, and I am tortured.

Catullus, Poem 85

I won’t go into too much detailed analysis, as that’s not the point, but this poem conveys the coexistence of hate and love as opposites, and how these two opposites existing at the same time creates feelings of being tortured. (The actual etymological breakdown of excrucior being ex- out/from and crux – cross, so basically, it means it’s painful that it feels like crucifixion. Fun fact: this is where the word “excruciating” comes from.)

However, I’m digressing. The point is, I wanted to take the idea of duality and generalize it to a greater narrative, more than just hate and love. And so, there are many opposites set directly against each other over the course of Draconic Echoes: The Ardent War. For example, the Hepteon (pantheon of seven dragon-gods), and the Malhepteon (pantheon of seven dragon-archdemons), are designed to oppose each other as two sides of the same coin. More so, if one were to zoom in further at each individual ancient dragon in the lore, each has a direct opposition. This is most apparent in Chapter 4, where the player must fend off masses of undead in the farmlands, aiding the goddess of life, Emmeria, against the underlings of the archdemon of death, Prasina. These two, the emerald dragon Emmeria, and the green dragon Prasina, are direct opposites, and the turmoil caused in Emmeria’s domain is a direct result of those two existing at the same time.

Now, how does theming like this help in terms of game design. Well, it helps to come up with general concepts and content ideas for quests. When designing a plethora of quests, it is easy to fall into frequently reusing the same type of narrative objective. While I think it’s fine to have the same general objectives, as the central game play loop does matter, a lot, the narrative can help to detract attention away from similar quest structures. After all, a game needs a core structure. So, when designing a quest, if you’re stuck, it’s a good practice to fall back on your central theme. Asking, “How does problem or conflict here relate back to the theme?” is a tremendous help in figuring out what the problem that needs to be solved is, or even what kind of solutions the characters need to carry out.

Overall, the theme of a narrative is a great tool to use as a guideline for not only details of the story, but also game design choices, like quest design. I’d say it’s even possible to have core game play mechanics relate to the theme. One very general example of this would be a game about teamwork, and the mechanics of that game would force cooperative player interaction. And one more time, to reiterate, a universal world shaking truth or exposing a deep-rooted evil of society is not necessary (possible, and I’m not discouraging this). All I am saying is that having a concept or multiple concepts that both the narrative and game design fall back on helps to create a compelling and cohesive experience as a whole. So, if you’re stuck, try out implementing a theme you’re interested in to help out!

If you’re curious about how all my nonsense actually plays out in a game, check out Draconic Echoes: The Ardent War on Steam!

Once I had decided that I wanted to make a turn-based RPG, there was one problem in my mind that I wanted to try to avoid. And that is random encounters becoming stale, and/or random encounters becoming the same step by step process for each and every one.

To demonstrate what I mean, I’d like to point towards Persona 5. Now, I love Persona 5, but there’s seldom a game with no flaws. Persona 5‘s combat system lends itself to random encounters becoming the same process for each pack, and they just become a repetitive process after some time in the same area. Once you find the elemental weakness for an enemy, all you have to do is use a skill with that element a few times and use the “All Out Attack” mechanic to win a fight (on most difficulties). I wanted to avoid this in my own game. (Again, not trying to bash Persona 5, it’s in my top 10 JRPGs list.)

I had this “stale random encounters” problem in mind very early in development of Draconic Echoes: The Ardent War. This problem, in fact, helped shape my “primers and detonators” elemental system. (If you haven’t played the game, or don’t know how this system works, check out the post “On Elemental Magic Systems” linked in the sidebar.)

Essentially, my way of solving this problem was to give elements moderately high chances to apply their primer/detonator effects. This makes every encounter dynamic in some way. The result of this system, as far as I can tell, is that when a player encounters a pack, most will have a standard opening turn, then adjust on the following turns based on what effects stuck and various other factors.

Now, RNG is a slippery slope. If you have none of it, you will certainly have repetitive encounters, and if you have too much, the randomness hijacks player control and devalues skilled play. The way I worked to balance this issue was to increase the odds of applying additional effects over the course of the game. As in, higher level spells have higher chances to apply effects. So, during the early game, players are able to develop an understanding of the fundamentals, while they aren’t punished much for ignoring the elemental systems. The primers and detonators feel like bonuses. However, over the course of the game, at least for boss fights, and especially on hard mode, if the player does not integrate the elemental systems into their battle plans, then they will start to struggle. As the player is able to apply the effects reliably at that point in the game, the game is balanced in such a way that expects frequent use of the elemental systems. I feel that my “primers and detonators” system provides to the player a dynamic experience where, even when the random encounter generator decides to spawn the same enemy pack five times in a row, each fight is at least somewhat different in practice.

The bottom line here is that if you don’t want encounters to be a laundry list of moves the players go through for each pack, then the core systems of your combat need to be dynamic. RNG helps with that, but in moderation, and in a way that makes sense and doesn’t take away player agency. Stale encounters can be a huge turn off for any game that uses either turn-based mechanics, or random encounters, or in my case, both. So it is important to find solutions to combat this problem.

If you’re curious about how all my nonsense actually plays out in a game, check out Draconic Echoes: The Ardent War on Steam!

Generally, there are two ways to design enemy levels in RPGs. The first is traditional set levels, where the same enemy will always have the same statistics and attack set. The other is the style where the enemies’ levels change based on the players, so that the player is always presented somewhat of a challenge, no matter what the fight is.

So, the question follows, “How does one decide whether to use a set or scaling level system?” I was thinking about this question for a while in the early stages of development. As a fan of difficult games myself, I like the idea of the challenge that scaling offers, but ultimately, there are some narrative drawbacks to using scaling.

Honestly, I am of the opinion that a game’s narrative structure should dictate whether it is a set or scaling level style. A structured narrative, like traditional games of the Final Fantasy series feels better off as a structured style, while open world RPGs such as The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim give much better experiences with a scaling enemy level. This is because a structured experience is just that, structured, and each enemy can be specifically tailored to where the player is expected to be approximately on the level curve. That being said, one of the big draws of open world games, such as Skyrim is the ability to craft your story and be the hero (or cabbage hoarding kleptomaniac) you truly want to be. As a result, the enemy level scaling system allows the player the freedom to go literally anywhere they want and not get one-shot (bar getting launched 5,000 ft. into the air by a giant).

So, what was I to do about my game’s enemy level system? As Draconic Echoes: The Ardent War is very narrative driven and structured, I decided to go with a set level style. One of the protagonist’s driving characteristics is the desire to become stronger, therefore the game play should reflect this in some way. As the players levels up, the numbers say that they are getting stronger, but does it feel that way? Would it not be weird that after going on a grand adventure, obtaining legendary weapons, and slaying dragons, the bats and rats back in the first cave were somehow still a threat? Yeah, it would be strange. Especially considering the central narrative point that the protagonist is striving to get stronger, I decided a traditional structured level style would be a better fit for both my game’s narrative.

Both styles of enemy leveling offers unique and compelling game play experiences, but really, the style and system must be selected based on what experience the game is trying to achieve.

If you’re curious about how all my nonsense actually plays out in a game, check out Draconic Echoes: The Ardent War on Steam!

In a fantasy RPG, or any RPG that even generally involves magic, it is very frequent that there is some sort of mechanics driving elements of magic. The most common variant of this would be elemental weaknesses and resistances. Of course, it makes sense that an fire elemental would take less damage from any fire damage the player throws at it, and on the flip side, take more water damage.

However, although this system is engaging in its own right, I feel that it has become so commonplace that just ending a game’s mechanics at that is not nearly enough. At least, for veteran players of the genre, many need to go through more thought processes than “I see fire, so I’ll shoot water” in order to stay engaged. Whether you decide to add more depth through tight resource management or other means, there needs to be something more to keep the game fresh.

What then, did I decide to do in Draconic Echoes: The Ardent War to keep magic elements engaging? I came up with what I eventually called the “Primer and Detonator” system, but more on that later. First, I came up with the goal, “I want to make each magic element feel unique.” As in, I wanted each spell choice to have a different effect on the battle. Additionally, at this point, I knew I wanted to have spells to chain off each other to give the feeling of and order and flow to magic combat. After messing around with what I could do, and ultimately deciding to cut the elements of “light” and “earth,” (let’s be honest, earth is just another form of physical damage if you think about it, right?) because I couldn’t quite fit them in a cohesive way, I came up with the following seven effects for my seven primary elements:

• Wind: Primer) Persistent Effect – “Downwind” – Reduces target evasion stats by 40%, doubles fire damage taken and “burning” application chance.
• Fire: Detonator) Persistent Effect – “Burning” – Damage each turn based on luck. Reduces target hit chance by 15%.

This pairing is themed around messing with the overall chance to hit of attacks. As fire is one of the primary elements of one of the player tank classes (Draconic Knight), causing the enemy having a reduced hit rate allowed that class to actively mitigate some incoming damage with fire spells. The narrative explanation of these two elements working together is that the wind riles up the oxygen in the air around the target and fuels the incoming fire damage. Also, because dragons are central to the plot of the game, and these are the two elements I feel they would primarily have, it was necessary to pair them together to make the dragons even more threatening.

• Water: Primer) Persistent Effect – “Wet” – Doubles cold and lightning damage taken and “freezing” application chance.
• Cold: Detonator) Persistent Effect – “Freezing” – Reduces speed by 50% and physical defense by 34%.
• Lightning: Detonator) No Persistent Effect, but it is the only magic element that allows for critical hits.

This little family of elements may seem a bit strange, but honestly it works out quite well. Water may seem lackluster because “Wet” doesn’t do anything more than the standard doubling damage, but it serves a versatile option for many situations. The player can follow up with cold magic, and even follow up with some physical attacks after that, or attack with lightning damage and potentially fish for some critical hits that already have a x2 damage multiplier applied to them. At first, this element family was shaped by purely the narrative means of water freezing over on the target or zapping a drenched target for even more damage. It’s quite simple, but it actually had an impact on some enemy designs. Very roughly, later in the game where I decided to give enemies frequent access to spell synergy, warriors usually have some water-enchanted weapon attack and a cold attack to help them do even more damage, and thief-like enemies, or enemies I thought should generally be trying to fight with critical hits, used lightning magic with their critical hit buffs or water spells.

• Dark: Primer) Persistent Effect – “Hopeless”- Reduces strength and magic power by 25%. Doubles psychic damage taken and “fractured mind” application chance.
• Psychic: Detonator) Persistent Effect – “Fractured Mind” Forces the target to only use basic attack at friend or foe at random. Reduces TP generation to 0.

Here, the mechanical theme of this pairing is “Stop doing damage for a bit.” Psychic may seem quite powerful, especially if you know that most psychic spells ignore some of the target’s magic resistance stat during damage calculation. However, frequent use of it is walled by the TP system (a resource that needs to be generated through participation in combat) and most usable psychic spells being accessible only through the one party member that can consistently heal. On the narrative side of things, the dark magic amplifies the target’s doubts and worries to throw it into despair, then if it is hit with psychic magic, that despair is exploited to temporarily drive it into insanity.

That’s the basics of my primer and detonator system for you, and some of my reasoning behind why the primers: wind, water, and dark, interact with their respective detonators: fire, cold, lightning, and psychic. That’s of course, just my result. It may be beneficial to describe briefly some of the earlier stages of this system that didn’t even come close to being implemented.

The first iteration was ambitious. I thought it would be a good idea to have every single element interact with the other with some narrative reasoning or another to increase damage and create a unique effect. Then I got to thinking, “Wait, if everything is doubling everything else’s damage, what’s the point?” The game’s balance is just going to be designed around always doing double damage, effectively making that mechanic entirely null, and divorcing it from any feeling that the player is doing anything special. In other words, if everything does double damage, then that becomes the new norm, and it wouldn’t feel special. Furthermore, could I realistically design a unique feeling and narrative effect for every pairing in the set of 7 elements? (That’s 21 for those of you like me who recoil at the thought of doing extra math). And at that point, I hadn’t decided to cut “light” and “earth” yet (That would make the target 21 actually 36). I’m sure it’s possible, but as it stood at the time, as a fledgling developer, I didn’t want to sprint out of the gate to fall face first in the mud.

Thus, I started pairing down the elements and spreading elements across the different party members and classes so that the player could explore different spell combinations, and in doing this setting a distinct flow to combat. The result was the primer and detonator system I described above. More so, as primers only last the turn they are applied and the following turn, changing even one party member’s speed stat to be faster or slower than another causes the player to adjust what type of spell combinations are optimal in this system. Although the system is a bit simple, ultimately I think it provides a dynamic experience where it provides many risk-reward situations with varying degrees of risk based on the circumstances. As such, situations like the following come into being naturally from this system.

“Do you wanna get that double psychic damage on the boss? Yeah you do, but damn, your tank is low on HP. But that “hopeless” effect is only going to last this turn. So, you wanna risk it?”

Not only that, but also this system keeps randomly encountering the same enemy pack somewhat fresh, as primers are not guaranteed to be applied. Even if the player opens the encounters with the same spells based on the enemies’ weaknesses, the application of primers will change the circumstances of the fights, and the players will have to adjust their battle strategies accordingly.

Well, that’s everything I can think to say on my primer and detonator system. As I’ve mentioned before in a previous post, I think it’s very important for a turn-based RPG to have active mechanics for the player to manage if it wants to stay relevant in a market with a higher demand for action games. This system is definitely one way I designed my game around that philosophy. Magic element systems are used frequently, but they’re by no means close to being completely developed or iterated upon. I hope to see many more unique magic element systems implemented in games in the future.

If you’re curious about how all my nonsense actually plays out in a game, check out Draconic Echoes: The Ardent War on Steam!

Almost everyone who’s played a game with random encounters has reached a point where they don’t feel like fighting them anymore, whether it be they just want to get on with the story, or are downright bored of the enemies in the area. Having an especially high encounter rate can be a really good way to drive away a player from your game or certain areas within it. For example, the Zubats of Rock Tunnel in Pokemon Red/Blue are infamous for spamming the player with unrelenting and unwanted encounters. It’s… it’s not like I just wanted to get to a freakin’ Pokemon Center ’cause my Wartortle is paralyzed, and it’s dark, and I’m lost ’cause I didn’t want to go get Flash, and I just CAN’T GET AWAY FROM THESE DUMB BATS! Ahem… My apologies, my old childhood traumas resurfaced for a second there. The point is, players can get frustrated when they meet a high volume of encounters that don’t let them get on with what they want to do.

So, my experience with random encounters in developing Draconic Echoes: The Ardent War was a bumpy one for sure. During early stages of testing, I was using an unedited version of RPG Maker MV’s system for generating random encounters. During the first time I had someone other than me play test my game, and after she got a random encounter on a few occasions probably less than 10 steps after running from a previous one, I knew something needed to be tweaked for sure.

Thus, I began poking around to see how exactly the engine was handling random encounter generation. From what I could tell, the only initial control over the encounter rate the engine provided was setting the top end of the RNG range for the step counter. That is, the engine generated a random number in the range 1 – X, where X is what I designated for each map. Once the player moves the randomly generated number of steps, a random encounter occurs. Now, this system is fine and it serves its purpose, but it is prone to creating what I called in my head throughout development as “The Zubat Effect” (described with my childhood trauma above).

Once I had identified the problem as such, it was time to get to work on a solution. First off, I needed to crank up the minimum encounter range value. If you’re using RPG Maker MV, like I did, Fallen Angel Olivia’s Anti-Player Stress plugin provides this functionality for when the player without the need to dig through code. That, however, only seemed to mitigate encounters only after the player initially entered the map, and inconsistently after subsequent encounters. I’m not sure whether this is due to a bug, plugin incompatibility, or me misunderstanding the function of the plugin. Anyway, it helped, but it wasn’t enough.

Fortunately, I was running Yanfly’s Repel & Lure Encounters plugin already to make in game items that temporarily remove random encounters. This plugin streamlines RPG Maker MV’s natural method of temporarily removing encounters from a state applied to an actor, into a variable, making it much more reliable and easy to work with. Basically, it allows you to set a variable to a number of your choice and as long as this variable > 0, the game does not generate random encounters. Each step reduces this variable by 1. So, I increased my encounter variable higher and made the item, “Warding Pearls” more affordable for the player. Again, doing this helped remedy the problem, but I still wasn’t addressing the initial issue I set out to solve. At this point, I had thrown tape and bandages all over this deep and gushing wound in my game’s design, but I hadn’t found a way to stitch it up properly yet.

At this point, it was time to refocus on the case that caused my friend her frustration. What was the common condition in her situation that wasn’t appearing to be touched by my previous fix attempts? It was in fact, that she was running from encounters. Now that’s interesting. This problem is expressly caused by running from combat. Therefore, I cobbled together a solution using two different plugins. First, is Yanfly’s Repel & Lure Encounters, mentioned above. The second, Sumrndmdde’s Battle End Events, which, as the name suggests, allows the developer to designate certain events to run at the end of battle. I used this plugin to add an event to when the player runs from battle. I added the following condition to running away:

If:
the encounter removing variable = 0: (this makes it so the following effect does not conflict if the player is already using the item to ignore encounters and wants to run from one not generated randomly)

Then:
set the encounter removing variable = 30

Effectively, this condition made it so that running away from a fight gave the player 30 free steps of no encounters (as long as they were not already using the item to ignore encounters). Adding this small change to the system made the simple act of walking around the game’s world feel so much smoother. And so, with the help of a few plugins, the problem was solved.

All this may seem like a long process to fix something that’s a non essential problem for the game to run, but random encounters can make or break a game that uses them. Therefore, it is very important to properly balance their rates. It might seem like something small to a developer, but one of the biggest things you’re asking from a player is their time. When a player feels like the game is wasting time throwing undesirable encounters one after another, it could ultimately end in the game being turned off. So, if you’re developing a game, keep an eye on your encounter frequency!

If you’re curious about how all my nonsense actually plays out in a game, check out Draconic Echoes: The Ardent War on Steam!

**Spoiler Warning** The following post may contain spoilers for:
Draconic Echoes: The Ardent War

Ah, the super move. I’ve seen this mechanic make players feel great and powerful in some cases, but it can also fall flat on its face if done wrong. From what I can discern, there are three major aspects you have to consider when designing a super move in your game.

• Method: How does the player gain the ability to use the super move?
• Timing: When can the player use the super move?
• Result: What does the super move actually do?

Method

The first thing you need to decide is how the player achieves a super move, whether it be a meter that builds over time, by damage, or some other mechanic. For example, the original Final Fantasy 7‘s limit break system builds its super moves based on each party member dealing and taking damage. With this method, limit breaks become part of the natural flow of battle. In stark contrast, Persona 5 employs a completely different system to achieving super moves. In Persona 5, you must hit each enemy with its elemental weakness to knock it down. Once all enemies have been floored, a “Hold Up” will trigger, granting players access to the super move, “All-out Attack.” Both limit breaks and All-out Attacks activate purely through their respective game’s basic mechanics, but they are completely different in how each player goes about gaining access to them. In all honesty, you can gain a limit break without doing anything special. Basic attacks and taking damage will generate enough limit breaks for you. In other words, limit breaks are granted to you passively. On the other hand, you must be actively engaging in Persona 5‘s element mechanics to even see an “All-out Attack.” It is possible, although ill-advised, to go through long stretches of Persona 5 without using a super move. The reason for this is that it is the responsibility of the player to trigger their super moves.

So, with the two basic concepts of active and passive triggering in mind, how did I go about designing my “Battle Clarity” in Draconic Echoes: The Ardent War? To be honest, I was trying to solve a balance problem. To make up a rough statistic, probably around 40% through the game, you must change your party members’ classes to advanced classes. In my mind, the mechanic of upgrading to “advanced classes” translates to the player as “I should feel a lot stronger now.” Originally, I thought a simple stat boost would be sufficient. However, that creates balance problems with combat in general. Throwing the player up the power curve a bit just makes the game easier. Sure, it makes your player feel powerful, but ultimately, the player will find it strange that suddenly they are steamrolling everything when you are at a later point in the game, thus dropping engagement of players who like challenges. This problem weighed on my mind for probably around 2.5 months. Then, I started playing Persona 5 in my free time. Engaging with the “All-out attack” system made me realize that I needed a super move to solve this balancing issue I was having. I thought back to other similar titles, like the original Final Fantasy 7, to examine how other super move systems were handled. This is when I drew the general conclusions outlined in the previous paragraph.

Next up, after deciding on a name and such, it was time for me to decide exactly how the player would interact with this mechanic. I felt that implementing a passive system like limit breaks wouldn’t especially fit with my game. It would be redundant with the Tempo (TP) resource and would not fit well with the general flow of combat. Draconic Echoes: The Ardent War focuses on combining different spells on different characters’ spell lists to deal increased damage and apply effects more frequently. Not having some sort of control of how the player activates the super move felt wrong. Therefore, I looked back at Persona 5, how does it grant use of its super move? Through the use of its unique game mechanics. So, that leads to the next questions. What are my unique mechanics? Can I connect a super move with this somehow? Well, I have my primers and detonators mechanics. In short for those of you who haven’t played my game, primers have a chance to leave a target with an effect that causes certain detonators to do more damage. For example, water magic has a chance to leave a target “wet,” doubling any lightning or cold damage it takes. The way I connected my “Battle Clarity” super moves to my base combat mechanics was to have my characters demonstrate their understanding of these mechanics. Once every living enemy has had a certain state applied to them, a “Moment of Clarity” will trigger, granting a use of the “Battle Clarity” super move. For example, if Vendra becomes the Draconic Knight class, once all living enemies have had the “downwind” state, which doubles fire damage, applied to them, she will gain access to the fire spell “Draconic Burst Wave.” In this way, I felt that “Battle Clarity” further encouraged players to engage with the game’s mechanics, made the player feel more powerful, and demonstrated the party’s narrative growth as they are learning the rules of combat along with the player. Honestly, I personally think giving players active things to manage is essential in making a modern turn-based RPG, but that’s not to say gauge systems like limit breaks are bad. It’s important to assess how a super move’s method will fit in to the game’s core mechanics while designing it. Don’t shoehorn in a method that you’ve seen work in similar games you like. Iterate, iterate, iterate, because how the player gets a super move is just as important as the result of that super move.

Timing

Although my method takes clear inspiration from Persona 5‘s active “All-out Attacks,” “Battle Clarity’s” timing feels more like Final Fantasy 7‘s limit break system. Essentially, in Persona 5, you must use your super move as soon as it triggers, or it is forfeit. In Final Fantasy 7, you may hold for as long as you wish. Since my method was so similar to Persona 5, I decided that I would implement the early stages of “Battle Clarity” with a similar timing. At first,the game auto cast any “Battle Clarity” at the exact moment it was triggered. This, however, raised other problems. What if the player trigger’s the Draconic Knight’s moment of clarity while a dragon that is healed by fire is there? Is it really fair to the player to force them to heal enemies? My quick answer to that was “nope.” After several iterations of the timing of “Battle Clarity” I arrived at its current state. That is, triggering a “Moment of Clarity” puts the super move in the spell list, usable once per fight. Not only did this give players more control, but also it fit in well with the base mechanics of creating spell combos because the player is able to combine all party members’ super moves together on one turn. Additionally, at this point in development, I had not designed all of the boss fights, and nothing of the hard mode difficulty setting. The use of this super move timing allowed me to design certain encounters where it was highly beneficial for the player to hold all of the “Battle Clarity” attacks in order to decimate some trash enemies that would enter the fight late. Of course, that is not to say the timing I used is the correct rule of thumb. My game was greatly improved by allowing the player to choose when to use super moves, but it really comes down to a game by game basis. If you’re thinking about implementing a super move in your game, make sure you consider game balance and mechanics while determining its timing.

Result

Finally, we get to the central piece of the puzzle. What does the super move do for your player? This is the part that’s going to give your player that important feeling of power that I mentioned earlier. In the examples of Persona 5 and the original Final Fantasy 7, most of the super moves just straight up do damage. I’ve seen other games give party members big buffs for their supers, but I’m digressing. What I wanted to do with “Battle Clarity” is to take another step deeper into my own game’s mechanics. Because I designed it in such a way that all party members are able to use their super moves on the same turn, I also made it so that some “Battle Clarity” attacks have certain degrees of synergy with even each other. Not only that, but as each one is customized for each individual class, they help in defining each of their respective character classes as a whole. At this point it would be easier to list out each “Battle Clarity” attack to demonstrate what I mean here. So, here they are by class.

(Note that all “Battle Clarity” attacks hit all enemies, go first in a turn, generate some resources, and provide a strength or magic power buff in addition to the following effects.)

Warlord

The Warlord is the typical warrior who overwhelms its opponents with pure physical power. As such, its “Battle Clarity” unique effects are the following:

• Deals physical damage (can crit)
• Applies the “mock” effect (taunt) to the user
• Applies the “fortify body” effect (immunity to many physical ailments)
• to the user
• Applies the “riposte stance” effect (100% critical hit rate for a moderate duration) to the user
  
• Guards the user

Draconic Knight

The Draconic Knight is a magic wielding warrior class that has spells themed around, as you may have guessed, dragons. It has the power to breathe fire in addition to hitting its enemies fairly hard on the physical side of things. On top of all this, a Draconic Knight often times must serve as an effective tank as well. In doing so, it adopts an active damage mitigation model. As such, its “Battle Clarity unique effects are the following:

• Deals fire damage (cannot crit)
• Applies the “burning” effect (damage over time and reduces hit chance by 15%) to all targets
• Applies the “dragon fear” effect (34% strength, magic power, speed, and luck reduction) to all targets
• Guards the user

Assassin

The Assassin is a physical damage dealer based around dealing critical hits and applying effects that set up combos for itself and other party members. It also excels at applying physical effects such as “bleeding” and “dazed.” As such, its “Battle Clarity” unique effects are the following:

• Deals physical damage (can crit)
• Applies the “bleeding” effect (damage over time and increases physical damage received by 25%) to all targets
• 66% chance to apply the “dazed” effect ( cannot act the current turn and following turn) to all targets
• Chance to apply the current “Assassin’s Enchantment” (provides magic element combo synergy depending on enchant selected) to all targets

Illusionist Rogue

The Illusionist Rogue specializes in dealing magic damage to all targets while defending against opposing magic at the same time. Naturally, being able to deal consistent magic damage to all targets is a great help to producing magic combos. In addition, the Illusionist Rogue’s single target option often involves using (and potentially critically hitting with) lightning magic. As such, its “Battle Clarity” unique effects are the following:

• Deals dark/lightning fusion damage (can crit)
• Applies the “hopeless” effect (reduces strength and magic power by 25%, doubles psychic damage received) to all targets

Songstress

The Songstress learns an extensive list of support skills and psychic damage. As it can generate resources quicker than other classes, the Songstress quickly pumps out powerful support, allowing the other party members to really shine. As such, its “Battle Clarity” unique effects are the following:

• Deals psychic damage (cannot crit)
• Applies the “inspirational ballad” effect (heal over time, hit, crit, and evasion buff) to all party members

*It may not seem like much, but having an extra spell that can apply “inspirational ballad” despite its normal cool down is extremely helpful on hard mode

War Sorceress

The War Sorceress is a bit tricky to explain. If a Draconic Knight is a warrior that can also cast spells, then a War Sorceress is a spellcaster that can also wear heavy armor and is trained for battle. If that makes sense. It’s primarily a spellcaster, but can do a couple warrior things. A War Sorceress can fit into many roles from support, to off-tank, or even high single target damage dealer. Additionally, the War Sorceress can cast fusion magic independent to what weapon it is using with the fire, lightning, and water elements. As such, its “Battle Clarity” unique effects are the following:

• Deals fire/psychic fusion damage (cannot crit)
• Applies the “fusion primer” effect (increases damage taken from fusion spells by 25%) to all targets BEFORE damage calculation occurs
• 33% chance to apply the “burning” effect (damage over time and reduces hit chance by 15%) to all targets
• 25% chance to apply the “fractured mind” effect (forces the afflicted to attack a random target (friend or foe) with only a basic attack for a few turns) to all targets

As you can see, super moves can do so much more than just deal damage or provide a big heal. Each one of these super moves not only makes the player feel more powerful in their “advanced classes” but also helps define the narrative flavor of each class. Not only that, but also look at how well the Illusionist Rogue’s and War Sorceress’ super moves work together. No matter which goes first, one is increasing the damage of the other. Other similar synergies can be set up with the Assassin’s attack depending on its enchantment too. And of course, these set-ups are available for the next turn while the party members have their stat bonus too. More so, when used alone or without any plan to follow up, these “Battle Clarity” attacks don’t calculate out to be impressive damage at all. It’s up to the player to weave them into combos to make them especially devastating.

Now, one final question remains. Wouldn’t having excessively powerful spells trivialize encounters? Well, ignoring the fact that important encounters are designed with these super moves in mind, let’s examine its effects on random encounters, shall we? “Battle Clarity” is dependent on the player applying the correct effects to all living enemies. It is highly unlikely that a group of 3-5 enemies will receive the necessary effects given spells that mostly have ~30%-50% chances to apply them. That being said, it does happen on rare occasion that the player AoEs the enemy pack turn 1 with wind magic and gets lucky enough to trigger the Draconic Knight’s “Moment of Clarity.” To that I ask, so what? It’s one encounter. The player got to decimate a random encounter and feel really powerful while doing it. Let them. They’re having fun with it. In fact, this situation came up a few times during my play testing. I actually enjoyed smashing through by using a super move right off the bat. This is wandering a bit into encounter design, but as a designer, if you’re concerned that the player is able to stomp all over one encounter, which, in the grand scope of your game, is unimportant, you may want to reassess what you are valuing. Keep in mind that designing a single player experience means that you are designing something that is meant to be conquered. But, I’m digressing far too much at this point. That’s best left for another topic discussion.

Conclusion

There’s some insight into the process I used to design “Battle Clarity” in Draconic Echoes: The Ardent War and my thoughts on the concept of super moves as a whole. Since this nearly turned into a fully developed essay, let me sum it up here. You can have active or passive conditions for super moves. Both can work depending on your game’s mechanics, but in my personal opinion, active conditions are essential for turn-based RPGs to stay competitive in the western market where we are seeing a higher demand for action based games. Deciding whether or not your player has control of the super move’s timing is also very important and can change around the balance of your entire game, depending on your game’s mechanics of course. And lastly, the actual effects of super moves are what makes the player feel or fail to feel powerful. Many games have a simple huge damage spell or damage buff, but super moves can be so much more than that. If you’re designing a game, push the envelope with what your super move does. Design super moves that only you can pull off with your game’s unique mechanics. I’m sure there must be some games out there that do this already, but I haven’t heard of them yet or they’ve fallen out of my memory at this point. Well, there you have it. Super moves have a huge impact on a game’s overall flow, so take care in designing them!

If you’re curious about how all my nonsense actually plays out in a game, check out Draconic Echoes: The Ardent War on Steam!