[Role Playing Game] The Questers

[Apheraz Lucent]

I had this idea which I'd like to hear opinions about.

In short, it is a very simple RPG/Adventure for a team of eight. Each playable character has a pre-set amount of hit points, and has no abilities at all! You do not gain any abilities either through the game.
Instead, every character has it's own "feature". For an example, the Sorceress is a fragile ranged character, whose attack strikes three enemies in a chain. The Wizard's attacks strike an AoE. The Knight does not have any attack modifier, but he is a lot tankier, and his perk is to have debuffs last only 30% of normal duration on him. The Priestess can attack her allies to heal them instead.

The goal of the project would be to have a very simple core and characters, with various items to heavily outbranch the character design (A Priestess with an item that reduces armor can effectively attack allies to heal them more than usual, or a Ranger, whose attack strikes all enemies in a line, can use a slowing item to grant her CC control).

Characters would progress through a fantasy world, and aid various characters throughout the game, hence the name The Questers. Instead of a grinding RPG, this adventure would be very quick paced, level-based and something fresh.

Do you think this idea would catch on?

 

[cleavinghammer]

The concept sounds like more of a console game, but I'd be interested in seeing it.

 

[Apheraz Lucent]

That's kinda the point I'm trying to achieve - a minimalist approach with gameplay that branches out.

 

[cleavinghammer]

What other classes are there?

 

[HappyTauren]

For how simple you want this to be, you obviously didn't account for how hard it is to reduce debuff duration by 70% for specified units. This requires knowledge of how long the debuffs last, which you need to save somewhere, you need to implement debuff stack counting, and use timers to remove things when they should be removed, and suddenly a map that you imagined would be simple got a whole lot more complex for no reason.

 

[Tal'Rarity]

Since you can only have 7-8 buffs/debuffs at once on one unit it is really easy to make some code to control those which makes duration managing even simpler then before. Neat Idea, it could be a really fun game.

 

[HappyTauren]

What do you do when a buff is re-applied before the duration runs out? You need buff stack counting at that point, which means unit indexing.
Ofc you can make it, but if the point was to keep this as simple as possible, this is a needlessly complex to (properly) implement mechanic.

 

[cleavinghammer]

Why not set a time limit instead? As in, dispel the buff 15 seconds after it's cast or something.

 

[HappyTauren]

because that still needs a counter and doesn't change anything

Do you people even understand what the problem is? Have you ever actually tried to implement this kind of a thing?

 

[Apheraz Lucent]

Well for now, I've 12 classes, very likely subject to change.

Tank:
- The Knight - Valiance - Reduces all debuffs on yourself by 75%.
- The Witch - Hand that Takes - Your attacks lifesteal for 30% of dealt damage.
- The General - Formation - Grants a 8% damage bonus aura in a short AoE. Every affected unit emits their own aura field. Stackable.
- The Strategist - Rescue - You can attack an ally to swap places with them if they're in 700 range from you.

Damage:
- The Wizard - Cha-boom! - Attacks strike all enemies in 225 area of effect.
- The Sorceress - Rebound - Attacks rebound to hit two additional enemies.
- The Assassin - Fade - Grants permanent invisibility when not using any active form of action.
- The Ranger - Whistling Shot - Attacks pierce all enemies in a line.

Support/Utility:
- The Bard - Melody - You can attack an ally to give it a short speed burst.
- The Piratess - Plunder - Loot table is extended by three additional items.
- The Priestess - Faith - You can attack allies to heal them instead.
- The Mistress - Seduce - Briefly slows enemies you attack.

@HappyTauren , concept for debuff duration I've had in mind is rather simple. Since I do not plan to add any more instances of debuff reduction on either items or characters, it's be as easy as detecting a monster casting a dummy spell, and then making a dummy either cast level 1 of let's say slow (for normal chars), or level 2 (for knight). It is a robust system but it does it's work.


~
That being said, to share how diverse the map will be, I've designed the first area in terms of monsters. The interesting part of it is when your party gets stuck in a cave, which is of course, infested with spiders. You'll have to survive for two minutes.
It's a circular map and you can't escape. Spiders appear at the corners of the map. At first, you're attacked by very fast and weak spiders. At about 30 seconds, Wolf Spiders join in, which are slow but have high HP. On one minute mark, the spitting spiders come out - these are of medium speed but are ranged. Lastly, 30 last seconds feature an addition in form of Black Widows - very small and very slow, but with extremely high damage that can one-hit your carries and supports.

 

[HappyTauren]

No, it won't be robust, it isn't easy, and it definitely isn't simple at its core. That's the point. If it was left to someone inexperienced to implement, it just plain wouldn't work.

EDIT: I re-read your post, I guess I understand what you want to do with separate levels. But this means you can't have multi leveled spells, which is really bad. Also the system is set in stone and not extensible in any way meaning if you want to change things it's a pain. Also you are complicating things with dummy casters when honestly you should just pick a simpler concept to work with. Status resistance is a cool concept, but it just doesn't go in line with "very simple map" stereotype you are going for, especially if you are going to implement it in such an inflexible way. It's a bad design idea to limit yourself so early in the development.

Aside from having to know all the durations for every level of every debuff, you also need to count the stack of each debuff, so that you don't remove it prematurely if it was reapplied. That's the whole point.

If there's a debuff that lasts 10 seconds, and there's 75% duration reduction for the class, if one unit applies the debuff to your hero, it'll be removed after 2.5 seconds. So what happens if it is re-applied one second after it was initially applied? it'll be removed prematurely, since it should last 3.5 seconds in total. This is why you need a debuff counter. At this point you need to index your units. And create a structure that allows you to easily save the debuff stack.

If you know what you're doing, and are aware of all the problems you need to solve, this is a simple thing, but if you assume it's simple by not understanding what the problems are, then it just won't work as intended.

My gripe was that you put this alongside other actually simple stuff, when it really isn't that simple.

 

[cleavinghammer]

Assassin's ability seems kinda iffy, unless there's a lot of scenarios that entail standing in one place without moving.

Speaking as someone who's bad at micro, I dunno if the "attack ally to trigger spell" is better than just using an ability. I know I'd end up ordering every unit to attack the guy I'm trying to buff.

How is death handled? Revive for a fee, at the end of the level, all deaths final...?

 

[Apheraz Lucent]

Active form of action involves attacking or casting - walking is considered passive in the map.
Since you control only one character (map's for eight), I don't think micro would be too complicated in terms of micro, plus macro is non-existent.

Didn't decide on death yet, I think I'd add several difficulty modes that allow a certain amount of "lives" per each level. Easy would have 2 extra lives, Normal would have 1, and in Hard, you wouldn't revive until the end of the level if you die.

@HappyTauren , When I said I want a simple map, I meant it in terms of playability, not make-ability. A 75% reduction in debuff length is very easy to grasp by a player - how difficult is to be grasped by me - it's on my back.
In any case, map is still in brainstorming idea and is heavily subject to changes.

 

[Wareditor]

If a concept is simple to understand for the player, it doesn't matter how complex it is to implement as the goal is to craft an experience for the player and not the developer.
In this case, the implementation isn't hard at all to a skilled coder. You just have to build a buff system or use an exesting one and customize it to your needs.

This thread is interesting. I would be happy to see a prototype of what you are presenting here. I would advise against starting with so many classes and focus on only a very limited amount of class at first to really define your level of polish at first.

 

[HappyTauren]

I was under the impression that the map was supposed to both be simple to play and make, which is why I found it weird that a system like that was thought up in first place.