RPG's Detailed or Not to be Detailed

Hey everyone, I’m making a turn-based, tactical, RPG. I have all kinds of ideas on how to display my info, but I was wondering how much information everyone likes to have?

( this is in addition to the visual queues from health bars, etc.. )

1) i hit, he hurt

2) I hit, he looses 10%

3) I strike with my Short Sword , he looses 5hp ( 10% )

4) I strike with (Short Sword: AIM_BONUS = 3, STR_BONUS = 4) {no Crit}, and he takes wound to chest 11hp lost ( 14.5% ) and starts bleeding for 3 rounds

5) other

I don’t like extra clutter, but I’ll give the people what they want. So I would vote 2, myself. Thanks for the input!

Final Fantasy Tactics (the first) had one of the better info systems. (IMO of course) So I base that on reference.

As far as hitting:
Number 2, though I’d have actual values.

Setting up some options would always be nice somewhere. Could have an option where % is displayed in parentheses.

hit : 45

hit : 45 (37%)

I love (good) tactics games. A shame there aren’t that many >.>

Yes FFT was good. I find my self leaning towards Fire Emblem combat system with just a number and a health bar. and then optional details later. My roommate is one of those, " I gotta have every detail every second " kinda guys. i was hoping that this little survey would show if he was a minority or not.

For a tactics game, either 1) or 2).

(kinda offtopic)

The monster hunter series is a perfect example of 1), but without the monster health bar and all. And without the text saying you hit. It’s a 3d RPG where you’re a monster hunter. It’s a completely tactic-based game, and beside getting really bad scores on gamespot, it’s great. Instead of a monster health bar, there’s a much more realistic visual system, where the monster acts differently at different healths, such as a wyvern will fly away on low hp, go in ‘rage’ mode more, and limp when on really low hp. This adds a level to the ‘tactic’ involved in the game, as one must be able to guesstimate the health the monster has left (or rather hits left). (PS2, PSP, PS3)

(pops in FE to remember it)

Yeah, that works nicely. FE has a fairly quick battle system, which is actually really nice.

I noticed Kong just got a recent demo of a game, Telepath RPG Ch. 2 Battle Demo. In that game, they have the damage information near the attack command…thing. And personally, it’s a bit frustrating. I find the easiest way to see where damage has been applied is not in a log or out of the way. Like FFT or Tactics:Ogre Battle, it’s best (opinion) to have some indication of damage pop up over the unit’s sprite. It’s something I’ve always preferred. Having a health bar would be a great addition, but I wouldn’t neglect a popup.

Now I’m actually like your friend, believe it or not. I love information and numbers related to that information (I’d be a really good statistician), back when I played WoW, I had so many addons and mods giving me so much info it’d make most people’s heads explode; but there were definitely times when I needed to hide them as well. Since I’ve nothing to do but sleep here, I’ll comment a bit on the above options.

1) i hit, he hurt —

While this provides a very clean system (which is good), it doesn’t provide much data. If you include your health pretty much like in FE then it’s not nearly as bad, but it doesn’t hurt to have a little better indication as to how your performance is. it can be hard to tell a 10% difference with just a bar at times.

2) I hit, he looses 10%

Pretty much the best as mentioned above, but with physical numbers.

3) I strike with my Short Sword , he looses 5hp ( 10% )

This would be good if provided at the top or bottom of the screen with a 1 or 2-line log, or in some other area (like an actual combat log that you can bring up) But it doesn’t seem … useful. It shouldn’t be difficult to know who’s equipped with what in most circumstances, and also won’t matter in most cases, unless you allow equipment changes during a battle. Even then, it would be best done in a separate log somewhere.

4) I strike with (Short Sword: AIM_BONUS = 3, STR_BONUS = 4) {no Crit}, and he takes wound to chest 11hp lost ( 14.5% ) and starts bleeding for 3 rounds

Funny /golfclap. Actually, I believe Tactics 100 incorporated a similar system. Used for that particular game, and how it worked with the mechanics of the game, it wasn’t too bad. My only gripe is that with T100’s system it causes a lot of delay. In T100 after using a wizard with upgraded chains, it’d take annoyingly long for all the damage to register. Most of this information is very, very useless.

One of my gripes with most Tactics games is the length it take for all the damage to resolve in a fight. FFT and T-OB weren’t so bad for the most part. But some of the flash games I’ve played (probably due to them begin … flash) seem to take much more time for damage to resolve. The best thing about FE was the quickness of a fight. They generally went by quickly.

Those are my opinions on a few matters of Tactics games. It’s really hard to make a great one. There was one a while ago… I forget the name of it now, an odd Japanese name, that was apparently quite awful because of an extremely low hit chance and constant 1hit KOs from the comp.

Well that’s if from me for now. I could go on forever about my views on tactics RPGs. :p

Nabb – thanks I didn’t think of the pop up damage. But I did plan on incorporating on visual queues as well, mostly for bosses. I am a Computer Science major, and I want to concentrate in A.I. so I try to aim my code around how should objects “think.”


Dedendre – I hate scrolling through logs, but that might be because of all the excess info that i have to scour through. It also invites people learn how my engine works w/ more detail, not being a big issue in my first version of the game, that will only be single player. But I was considering just storing the previous action and its results and clearing all after the battle sequence.


Looking back on my youth, Pokemon seemed to keep it simple enough yet give good guess work on their system. while not a tactic the combat sequence was a well done, ’cept for the weird angles on the pictures =P