EtherPenguin
Koopa
- Pronouns
- He/Him
There's always discussion on how turn based can work in modern games. A style that is inherently abstract struggling to look less goofy as graphics get more advanced. People often have strong opinions about what mechanics they've seen to evolve the genre but don't always consider the drawbacks to a particular style or that it's not always a one-size-fits-all solution, so I think it's interesting to discuss where the line is at how abstract you can make these things.
I'm also making this topic because I've been getting more and more serious about actually making my own medium-sized RPG. I don't want to be entirely self-indulgent with the combat mechanics and would rather make something more crowd-pleasing. For a hobbyist game that will be made primarily by one person on a small budget with lofi-ish 3D graphics like an in-between of Mega Man Legends and Skies of Arcadia, I think it's important for the main draw to be a combat system that makes RPGs fans say "hey that's the kind of thing I've been looking for!"
Seamless Encounters vs. Screen Transitions
In discussions of evolving/modernizing turn-based systems, the idea of making battles seamless with exploration will inevitably come up. The negative connotation surrounding screen transitions is partially rooted in people's familiarity with turn-based on older hardware like PS1 where the game needed time to load the battle instance. This could be obnoxiously long such as in FF9. But I think the bigger reason is that people just like having a sense of place and for the gameplay to feel continuous with itself.
Chrono Trigger was one of the first games to pioneer seamless battle encounters though it didn't lead to a revolution. Even its own sequel ignored the innovation and stuck with the standard separate screen battles. And I do think there are some flaws with CT's way of doing it. While positioning is a part of CT's battle system, you can't move your characters, they remain static. This means each encounter has hard-coded spots for the party members to stand in, and you have to watch the characters run over to their spots at the start of every battle (and wait for the members to walk back to the leader at the end of every battle before you can move again). The devs knew it would be silly if you initiated the encounter too far from the hard-coded spots, so they severely limited the ways you can get into encounters. Enemies can't chase you and it's very difficult to actually avoid an encounter a lot of the time. Rather than usual touch encounter systems, CT's encounters have areas or tiles that will trigger the encounter beyond just bumping into a monster. I've seen people refer to this as roller coaster dungeon design where the dungeon feels less like a place and more like a set ride with encounters as specific points on the ride, more on rails or more video-gamey I guess. I don't see CT's style working well for more open areas like large grassy fields, and CT notably excluded world map encounters. Of course, these are only problems for battle systems with static character positions, it's another story for positionable characters like Trails or Larian games. We'll discuss the pros and cons of static vs. positionable characters in a second here.
Another interesting game was Dragon Quest XI. On the surface, it appears to have basic separate screen battles. While yes, it has a transition when initiating an encounter, it actually uses CT's idea of set battle spots on the map. Battles in DQXI actually do take place on the same map which lets the transitions to battle be speedy as it's not loading in a separate battle instance or loading back in the explorable map after combat. The transition is to move the characters to the closest battle spot and spawn in the enemies. So while it's the same map, it's not seamless. You lose the seamlessness of actually seeing your character move to the battle spot but gain more anything-goes enemy placement on the map and enemies can chase you without worrying about moving too far from the designated battle spot. Based on videos I've seen, DQ10 does the same but actually leaves you at the spot of battle afterward. The transition out of battle is seamless in DQX. DQXI transitions you back to where you touched the encounter. I'm curious how it would've worked if they tried a seamless transition out of battle but it could feel like the encounter pushed you backwards in the dungeon and frustrate the player.
Another thing with screen transitions with touch encounters is that you can have random and varied enemy parties per encounter. Seamless usually means all enemies in the encounter have to be on the map first and that means the game has set enemy parties for each encounter.
Static Character Positions
Moving on to talk about how units behave and position themselves in battle, we'll first look at the classic static setup. This is usually where you'll have your characters lined up (either viewed from third party or first party perspective) opposite to the enemy party neatly lined up across from you. It doesn't have to be exactly that though. There can be rows or the enemy party can be spread out a bit more like Mario RPG. The main idea is that each unit has a set spot they stand in and return to when not making an action. This is the least visually interesting and the style that draws the most ire with the typical "why are they just standing around waiting to be attacked?" complaint thrown at the genre. It's definitely the most abstract form turn based can take but its benefits are speed and visual clarity.
The removal of any positioning or moving around in combat can speed things up significantly and this style is one of the best ways to achieve fast and snappy combat. It can be slowed down though based on how characters move to their target. Traditionally, in earlier pixel art games, the characters wouldn't move at all. They would swing their sword while staying in the line up on one side of the screen, and the enemy way on the other side of the screen would take damage. Definitely fast but a little too abstract nowadays, especially for 3D games. One of the best examples of this style of combat in my eyes is Xenosaga Episode III:
This is probably one of the better examples of fast and snappy turn based battles. I'm sure someone could find a Persona game that does it better, but you get the idea. Xenosaga 3 achieves its effect not just with fast animations (well, ignore that lightning blast move used a couple of times in the video), but with fast camera cuts as well. Look at how melee attacks are handled. We see the character start to run forward in the wide shot before cutting to a close-up shot of the monster with the player running into frame and beginning the attack. We don't know if the character actually ran all the way to the monster from their spot. They could have jumped the player ahead a little bit when changing the camera cuts, but we can't tell. It also doesn't bother to have the character run back after an attack, they just snap back to the lineup. But the fast camera cuts and clever angles hide a lot of this stuff and I think the result is really nice.
While the static lineup is perceived as goofy and old school, and while there is a lot of depth to be found in positioning, no other style can really rival this style's speed. Of course, first person battles (classic DQ/Etrian Odyssey) can be even faster at the cost of more abstraction and less visual clarity. Though a major drawback is how difficult it is to get this style to work with seamless battles as I outlined with the Chrono Trigger problems.
Auto-Positioning (Skies of Arcadia and Grandia)
In this style, characters move around on the map dynamically. The player doesn't position the characters themselves, rather they move in accordance with their attacks to their targets. Ranged attackers and spellcasters will usually just stay in their spot without the need to move. Though attack animations may change if an enemy has entered their melee range like with Aika in SoA or Lucca and Marle in CT which is always a nice touch.
It looks a lot better but things begin to slow down. SoA battles in particular feel slow to me. Grandia battles can be very quick though. Grandia especially takes advantage of this style to work with its main gimmick, the IP gauge. For those unfamiliar, Grandia has an initiative gauge divided into a blue wait segment the characters move along like every unit is sharing the same ATB bar, then a red segment which is the charge for the attack. Getting to the end of the blue wait bar and the beginning of the red bar is when you choose an action. Different actions have different charge times and the amount of time it takes to move over the enemy is also part of the red bar so it all works cohesively.
A good in-between of styles. May not be as snappy or have the same visual clarity as static line ups or as much control over positioning and AOEs as the next style, but a happy medium. Drawbacks would be unpredictability and loss of control. It can feel frustrating to essentially lose a tun because the enemy moved out of ranged before your turn came up.
Freely Positionable Characters (Trails and CRPGs)
This is the style where you're free to move a character around the battlefield before an attack - within a set range of course. It can come in different forms. Maybe they have more Tactics-like tiles like Trails in the Sky. Divinity Original Sin has you find a spot and commit to it based on the action points you have available before actually moving the characters. The upcoming Trails game (already out in Japan), Kuro no Kiseki lets you freely move characters inside a blue circle. The drawback to this style is that the actual step of moving around your character each turn can really slow things down. I feel most complaints about turn based combat all come down to "too slow" and "too abstract" and it's impossible to escape both because more abstraction is what gets you faster battles. But the Kiseki method might be the best here as you can freely move around with the analog stick which speeds things up compared to the Larian method of breaking movement up into two stages of picking a spot first then having the character move there. It also helps to keep things working seamlessly with the exploration when your movement controls are the same in and out of battle. This is probably the best style to work with seamless battles.
I did make an attempt at this style before in a month-long game jam game. You could move freely but not in a range. You had a BotW-style stamina wheel that determined the amount you could move per turn. Enemies could also move while you moved and standing still would pause time. It ended up being quite a mess and wasn't really fun, but maybe there's something there.
It does strike me that there are things you simply can't do in this style. I'm struggling to imagine the Grandia IP gauge working here. Would you move the characters while they're on the red gauge? Would you move them when choosing a command? If so then would they also move on their own while on the red gauge if their target changed positions? The Grandia system can work with static lineups, I mean you don't need positioning for a Grandia-inspired system if you're mostly just interested in the IP gauge and canceling mechanics. I've seen it work with static lineups in a game jam game. But can't imagine a version that would work with free movement.
Of course, pacing for all these systems also has to do with party sizes. I think three active party members is the sweet spot for fast-paced battles.
Menu-Based but not Turn-based?
A final idea I'll throw out there is for stat-based real-time like Xenoblade. I suspect the appeal of a Xenoblade-like system is more niche than turn based especially among people buying indie games. Some people call Xenoblade's system an auto-battle system or a cooldown system but I think those are missing the point which is just to have the focus on stats and the same sort of tactics and mechanics of turn based games in real time. You can do Xenoblade-like without auto-attacks or cooldowns. You can have a basic attack with a button press (arguably Xenoblade 2 already does with the left stick flicking) and you can have MP instead of cooldowns. You could have a two second global cooldown between attacks to simulate the opportunity cost of turn-based systems and help with visual clarity. You could pause to queue up party commands and individually set targets for each party member. There's plenty of unexplored territory for this style. Maybe tab-target inspired is a better word? It's still party based but you only control one character at a time while the rest are AI (could possibly use a gambits-like system in an original game) which is the main complaint. Some would also say it's the worst of both worlds. To me it's sort of the opposite as I get the main two things I care about: focus on stats + continuous gameplay moving from exploration to battles. Perhaps the least popular style but sometimes I wonder if it's just a vocal minority.
I'll put some final ideas about my own game I've been planning and how different styles would affect it into more details in a spoilered off section at the end:
I'm also making this topic because I've been getting more and more serious about actually making my own medium-sized RPG. I don't want to be entirely self-indulgent with the combat mechanics and would rather make something more crowd-pleasing. For a hobbyist game that will be made primarily by one person on a small budget with lofi-ish 3D graphics like an in-between of Mega Man Legends and Skies of Arcadia, I think it's important for the main draw to be a combat system that makes RPGs fans say "hey that's the kind of thing I've been looking for!"
Seamless Encounters vs. Screen Transitions
In discussions of evolving/modernizing turn-based systems, the idea of making battles seamless with exploration will inevitably come up. The negative connotation surrounding screen transitions is partially rooted in people's familiarity with turn-based on older hardware like PS1 where the game needed time to load the battle instance. This could be obnoxiously long such as in FF9. But I think the bigger reason is that people just like having a sense of place and for the gameplay to feel continuous with itself.
Chrono Trigger was one of the first games to pioneer seamless battle encounters though it didn't lead to a revolution. Even its own sequel ignored the innovation and stuck with the standard separate screen battles. And I do think there are some flaws with CT's way of doing it. While positioning is a part of CT's battle system, you can't move your characters, they remain static. This means each encounter has hard-coded spots for the party members to stand in, and you have to watch the characters run over to their spots at the start of every battle (and wait for the members to walk back to the leader at the end of every battle before you can move again). The devs knew it would be silly if you initiated the encounter too far from the hard-coded spots, so they severely limited the ways you can get into encounters. Enemies can't chase you and it's very difficult to actually avoid an encounter a lot of the time. Rather than usual touch encounter systems, CT's encounters have areas or tiles that will trigger the encounter beyond just bumping into a monster. I've seen people refer to this as roller coaster dungeon design where the dungeon feels less like a place and more like a set ride with encounters as specific points on the ride, more on rails or more video-gamey I guess. I don't see CT's style working well for more open areas like large grassy fields, and CT notably excluded world map encounters. Of course, these are only problems for battle systems with static character positions, it's another story for positionable characters like Trails or Larian games. We'll discuss the pros and cons of static vs. positionable characters in a second here.
Another interesting game was Dragon Quest XI. On the surface, it appears to have basic separate screen battles. While yes, it has a transition when initiating an encounter, it actually uses CT's idea of set battle spots on the map. Battles in DQXI actually do take place on the same map which lets the transitions to battle be speedy as it's not loading in a separate battle instance or loading back in the explorable map after combat. The transition is to move the characters to the closest battle spot and spawn in the enemies. So while it's the same map, it's not seamless. You lose the seamlessness of actually seeing your character move to the battle spot but gain more anything-goes enemy placement on the map and enemies can chase you without worrying about moving too far from the designated battle spot. Based on videos I've seen, DQ10 does the same but actually leaves you at the spot of battle afterward. The transition out of battle is seamless in DQX. DQXI transitions you back to where you touched the encounter. I'm curious how it would've worked if they tried a seamless transition out of battle but it could feel like the encounter pushed you backwards in the dungeon and frustrate the player.
Another thing with screen transitions with touch encounters is that you can have random and varied enemy parties per encounter. Seamless usually means all enemies in the encounter have to be on the map first and that means the game has set enemy parties for each encounter.
Static Character Positions
Moving on to talk about how units behave and position themselves in battle, we'll first look at the classic static setup. This is usually where you'll have your characters lined up (either viewed from third party or first party perspective) opposite to the enemy party neatly lined up across from you. It doesn't have to be exactly that though. There can be rows or the enemy party can be spread out a bit more like Mario RPG. The main idea is that each unit has a set spot they stand in and return to when not making an action. This is the least visually interesting and the style that draws the most ire with the typical "why are they just standing around waiting to be attacked?" complaint thrown at the genre. It's definitely the most abstract form turn based can take but its benefits are speed and visual clarity.
The removal of any positioning or moving around in combat can speed things up significantly and this style is one of the best ways to achieve fast and snappy combat. It can be slowed down though based on how characters move to their target. Traditionally, in earlier pixel art games, the characters wouldn't move at all. They would swing their sword while staying in the line up on one side of the screen, and the enemy way on the other side of the screen would take damage. Definitely fast but a little too abstract nowadays, especially for 3D games. One of the best examples of this style of combat in my eyes is Xenosaga Episode III:
This is probably one of the better examples of fast and snappy turn based battles. I'm sure someone could find a Persona game that does it better, but you get the idea. Xenosaga 3 achieves its effect not just with fast animations (well, ignore that lightning blast move used a couple of times in the video), but with fast camera cuts as well. Look at how melee attacks are handled. We see the character start to run forward in the wide shot before cutting to a close-up shot of the monster with the player running into frame and beginning the attack. We don't know if the character actually ran all the way to the monster from their spot. They could have jumped the player ahead a little bit when changing the camera cuts, but we can't tell. It also doesn't bother to have the character run back after an attack, they just snap back to the lineup. But the fast camera cuts and clever angles hide a lot of this stuff and I think the result is really nice.
While the static lineup is perceived as goofy and old school, and while there is a lot of depth to be found in positioning, no other style can really rival this style's speed. Of course, first person battles (classic DQ/Etrian Odyssey) can be even faster at the cost of more abstraction and less visual clarity. Though a major drawback is how difficult it is to get this style to work with seamless battles as I outlined with the Chrono Trigger problems.
Auto-Positioning (Skies of Arcadia and Grandia)
In this style, characters move around on the map dynamically. The player doesn't position the characters themselves, rather they move in accordance with their attacks to their targets. Ranged attackers and spellcasters will usually just stay in their spot without the need to move. Though attack animations may change if an enemy has entered their melee range like with Aika in SoA or Lucca and Marle in CT which is always a nice touch.
It looks a lot better but things begin to slow down. SoA battles in particular feel slow to me. Grandia battles can be very quick though. Grandia especially takes advantage of this style to work with its main gimmick, the IP gauge. For those unfamiliar, Grandia has an initiative gauge divided into a blue wait segment the characters move along like every unit is sharing the same ATB bar, then a red segment which is the charge for the attack. Getting to the end of the blue wait bar and the beginning of the red bar is when you choose an action. Different actions have different charge times and the amount of time it takes to move over the enemy is also part of the red bar so it all works cohesively.
A good in-between of styles. May not be as snappy or have the same visual clarity as static line ups or as much control over positioning and AOEs as the next style, but a happy medium. Drawbacks would be unpredictability and loss of control. It can feel frustrating to essentially lose a tun because the enemy moved out of ranged before your turn came up.
Freely Positionable Characters (Trails and CRPGs)
This is the style where you're free to move a character around the battlefield before an attack - within a set range of course. It can come in different forms. Maybe they have more Tactics-like tiles like Trails in the Sky. Divinity Original Sin has you find a spot and commit to it based on the action points you have available before actually moving the characters. The upcoming Trails game (already out in Japan), Kuro no Kiseki lets you freely move characters inside a blue circle. The drawback to this style is that the actual step of moving around your character each turn can really slow things down. I feel most complaints about turn based combat all come down to "too slow" and "too abstract" and it's impossible to escape both because more abstraction is what gets you faster battles. But the Kiseki method might be the best here as you can freely move around with the analog stick which speeds things up compared to the Larian method of breaking movement up into two stages of picking a spot first then having the character move there. It also helps to keep things working seamlessly with the exploration when your movement controls are the same in and out of battle. This is probably the best style to work with seamless battles.
I did make an attempt at this style before in a month-long game jam game. You could move freely but not in a range. You had a BotW-style stamina wheel that determined the amount you could move per turn. Enemies could also move while you moved and standing still would pause time. It ended up being quite a mess and wasn't really fun, but maybe there's something there.
It does strike me that there are things you simply can't do in this style. I'm struggling to imagine the Grandia IP gauge working here. Would you move the characters while they're on the red gauge? Would you move them when choosing a command? If so then would they also move on their own while on the red gauge if their target changed positions? The Grandia system can work with static lineups, I mean you don't need positioning for a Grandia-inspired system if you're mostly just interested in the IP gauge and canceling mechanics. I've seen it work with static lineups in a game jam game. But can't imagine a version that would work with free movement.
Of course, pacing for all these systems also has to do with party sizes. I think three active party members is the sweet spot for fast-paced battles.
Menu-Based but not Turn-based?
A final idea I'll throw out there is for stat-based real-time like Xenoblade. I suspect the appeal of a Xenoblade-like system is more niche than turn based especially among people buying indie games. Some people call Xenoblade's system an auto-battle system or a cooldown system but I think those are missing the point which is just to have the focus on stats and the same sort of tactics and mechanics of turn based games in real time. You can do Xenoblade-like without auto-attacks or cooldowns. You can have a basic attack with a button press (arguably Xenoblade 2 already does with the left stick flicking) and you can have MP instead of cooldowns. You could have a two second global cooldown between attacks to simulate the opportunity cost of turn-based systems and help with visual clarity. You could pause to queue up party commands and individually set targets for each party member. There's plenty of unexplored territory for this style. Maybe tab-target inspired is a better word? It's still party based but you only control one character at a time while the rest are AI (could possibly use a gambits-like system in an original game) which is the main complaint. Some would also say it's the worst of both worlds. To me it's sort of the opposite as I get the main two things I care about: focus on stats + continuous gameplay moving from exploration to battles. Perhaps the least popular style but sometimes I wonder if it's just a vocal minority.
I'll put some final ideas about my own game I've been planning and how different styles would affect it into more details in a spoilered off section at the end:
Each character has a general set 'class'. They can grow that class in different directions though like how one person's Frenzy Barb in Diablo 2 can play and feel fairly different from another person's Whirlwind Barb. Each character gets two weapons that act as two main styles they can switch between mid-combat somewhat inspired by Jade Empire and Xenoblade games (mostly X).
The main character is a dexterity character who has Knuckels for a brawler style and a Magic Saber for a speedy fencer style. The Knuckles style has a basic attack that hits twice so missing is less of a big deal, has some burst damage moves that are MP-hungry, can knockback enemies, has lightning elemental melee attacks, and can build tension like DQ8 (character-specific mechanic here, not game wide like DQ8). The Magic Fencer style has AOE moves, some wind elemental ranged attacks, mana regeneration, and a focus on evading and countering.
The idea of what it means to knockback enemies would vary depending on the style of combat. I originally envisioned a Grandia like system and doing my own take on the IP gauge but without positioning. The Knuckles' knocback attack would be like the cancel effects in Grandia. You could knock enemies back on the wait bar. If they were in red and you timed it right to pull off the move before they could charge the attack, they would be knocked further back and unable to use that move for a time. In a tab-target semi-realtime style it would pause the enemy's global cooldown for a second or more if they were charging an attack. I also had the idea of a separate stagger meter that would work with it and make the game feel less like a Grandia rip off. Knocking enemies back would fill the stagger meter. Knocking them back while they were charging a move would double the amount of stagger filled. Some moves would have bonus effects like stun or defense down when used on a staggered enemy.
But I'm out of ideas on how to do that with a free-movement positioning system unless I just have the stagger meter by itself but then would basically be Xenosaga 3 with positioning. Which could be serviceable but I know people really like turn manipulation. You can have turn manipulation and knocking enemies back with CTB and no gauge filling but then I'd just be making a Trails game. On the other hand, the free-movement system is the best for making battles seamless with exploration aside from the less popular Xenoblade-like system.
But then static lineups + screen transitions are easier to do for a one-person dev time. But I don't want to make the kind of hobbyist game that people play to be polite or out of pity. I want to make something that RPG fans actually want to play and that means being impressive.
The main character is a dexterity character who has Knuckels for a brawler style and a Magic Saber for a speedy fencer style. The Knuckles style has a basic attack that hits twice so missing is less of a big deal, has some burst damage moves that are MP-hungry, can knockback enemies, has lightning elemental melee attacks, and can build tension like DQ8 (character-specific mechanic here, not game wide like DQ8). The Magic Fencer style has AOE moves, some wind elemental ranged attacks, mana regeneration, and a focus on evading and countering.
The idea of what it means to knockback enemies would vary depending on the style of combat. I originally envisioned a Grandia like system and doing my own take on the IP gauge but without positioning. The Knuckles' knocback attack would be like the cancel effects in Grandia. You could knock enemies back on the wait bar. If they were in red and you timed it right to pull off the move before they could charge the attack, they would be knocked further back and unable to use that move for a time. In a tab-target semi-realtime style it would pause the enemy's global cooldown for a second or more if they were charging an attack. I also had the idea of a separate stagger meter that would work with it and make the game feel less like a Grandia rip off. Knocking enemies back would fill the stagger meter. Knocking them back while they were charging a move would double the amount of stagger filled. Some moves would have bonus effects like stun or defense down when used on a staggered enemy.
But I'm out of ideas on how to do that with a free-movement positioning system unless I just have the stagger meter by itself but then would basically be Xenosaga 3 with positioning. Which could be serviceable but I know people really like turn manipulation. You can have turn manipulation and knocking enemies back with CTB and no gauge filling but then I'd just be making a Trails game. On the other hand, the free-movement system is the best for making battles seamless with exploration aside from the less popular Xenoblade-like system.
But then static lineups + screen transitions are easier to do for a one-person dev time. But I don't want to make the kind of hobbyist game that people play to be polite or out of pity. I want to make something that RPG fans actually want to play and that means being impressive.
