By now everyone should be well aware that I'm a fan of game genres that incorporate story into the game itself, be it directly related to progression, something to break up the monotony of doing the same thing over and over again, whatever works. RPGs being my favorite genre, I've been revisiting a lot of old titles lately - Saxxon and I have played through Final Fantasy Mystic Quest, 4, 6, 7, 9, and most of 12 since my last post. Every example there uses the same battle system for the most part with the exception of 12, where the mechanics of battle change entirely. Rather than encounters being randomized and the scene changing for battle, the entire world is the battlefield. Granted, characters can't always fight or perform battle actions, but any place with enemies allows for choosing the leader of your team of three. Because the game relies on either a hybrid wait/active battle system in a real-time environment, it would be.. impractical.. to input commands to three party members every time they made an action. FF12 gave players a couple options from the beginning - while the full gambit system wasn't immediately available, player characters, when told to attack an enemy, would continue to do so unabated unless magic, “techniks”, or items were used. Gambits, once available, made the entire game FAR more manageable, adding conditional statements to players' actions, allowing them to be scripted in battle. With a maximum of 12 conditions per character that were procedurally unlocked by killing enemies, the more difficult encounters mid-game and beyond became a lot more tolerable. Considering this system and its gradual progression throughout the game lent itself very well to the evolution of the system's intricacy, I'm using it as a prime example of how to handle these kinds of worlds, battle systems, and scenarios in modern titles.
Last week on Insert Credit(s) in the ad hoc design section I mused on a tactical RPG simulator that allowed for a set of conditions to be input before a major battle. Rather than allowing players to adjust the conditions mid-battle, the game would rely on intelligence fed into it before and only before. As someone whose ability to play tactical games is highly flawed, it would be preposterous to have ME make the rules for that system, but the idea was planted in my mind and, well, here I am blogging about it. I'd like to see a system like what was discussed last Friday come to fruition, and not only in simulation, but also in the games ZHP makes. While we've made the decision to shelve Project Auspice for now, I still fully intend on making a TRPG with that world, and Farran wants to work on an open-world concept as a dream project for somewhere down the road. The concept I brought to the table could be used for both; in an open-world setting, this would closely resemble gambits, though with a TRPG it would force players to play battle-by-battle rather than turn-by-turn.
I think this opens the possibility for new angles in the genre! The system isn't planned out well or detailed by any means, but I think it has the potential to be very engaging as a mechanic across various RPG subgenres. What say you all?
