Hello! I am looking for general information on creating a highly complex combat system in which any attack or defense has multiple counters. I'm hoping to make it adequately complicated that even with multiple people looking at it there would not necessarily be a clear cut. What I'm trying to make is a standalone set of turn based rules which can later be incorporated into a real time game. What I'm concerned about is developing "Sweet spots". A player identifies, that although there is a lot of variables going into fighting, they can just cast fireball repeatedly and ignore everything else. Initially I thought a "decreasing efficiency" of any technique was the perfect solution, until I realized that then a player could just cycle through all abilities obligatory-like . . that is not strategy, it is an annoyance. I'll throw a few ideas I've had out on the table - and I'm hoping I can get some feedback, examples for existing games (maybe not even real time games) on how I can balance and hopefully some new ideas as well. If I succeed I can hide a huge layer of complexity from the user and it will be up to him or her to discover it. My end goal is this: 1. Mindless hack and slash will not be completely impossible, so you aren't forced to understand the game to play it. 2. BUT, employing strategy will be advantageous - so the user can fine tune their skills and hopefully discuss strategy and get suggestions from other users. 3. Optimal strategy is not clearly or obviously defined 4. Knowing an opponents' next move will be significantly more advantageous than other fighting games I'm probably going to add an "Easy mode" where there is no form involved in performing techniques but that is superfluous to the problem at hand. (I just foresaw someone saying that was a bad idea, and wanted to let known that I had thought about it.) I'm not going to say anymore about "form" because I consider it outside the scope of my intended discussion. First idea: (More than just HP/MP) Instead of just a life and mana counter, we have four real time numeric states (even if it is not represented numerically) I have not decided on names for them 1 Life 2 Magic / Mana / Spirit Force 3 Strength / Power / Physical force 4 Stamina So, anything other than moving or jumping is a "technique" (including using a weapon). All techniques use mana and power. Magical techniques, like fireball obviously use more Mana than strength and physical attacks use more strength than mana. Since the idea of "mana" being consumed in a physical attack is not intuitive, I may change the names enough that players are not tripped up by this. Techniques and injuries lower stamina. Injuries also lower life but players will have "mana block" and "strength block" spells that they will learn early in the game. If a magic spell or physical technique which requires a commit is canceled (or misfired) then this will also lower life and stamina. If stamina hits zero then the user will be stunned and highly vulnerable. (This precludes frantically casting without interruption) But I need to find a way to avoid the "stunned once means guaranteed death" problem without rewarding the player by just completely recharging their stamina. Second Idea: (Magical elements) There are five different types of elements (Earth, Fire, Water, Air, Lightning) and most spells require 0, 1, 2 or 3 elements but at any given time you can only have a primary, secondary and tertiary specialization. Performance of a spell will suffer if it doesn't have primary skill specialization. Specialization can be changed during a battle but is interruptible and VERY time intensive. Third idea: Timing Commit times and delays. Look at a game like Street Fighter, you do any technique, it happens instantly and then you keep going. I think to put real strategy into any game it needs commit times, state changes and maybe even other delays. Any other ideas? I'm fishing here, and I am more than willing to read about other games or other setups. My initial draft for the combat engine will be completely detached from anything real time and I will look for theoretical loopholes which could give someone an advantage before I try to add it into a real time environment.

Have you considered designing so that there are multiple optimal strategies, equally balanced?

Is this a game which has no equipment or stat points? Having equipment or stat points basically forces a player to try to specialize in one or two strategies, so it's kind of unfair in that case to make it impossible to specialize effectively.

Is this a game with a variety of computer opponents or monsters? If so, it's common to make each opponent have an optimal strategy to use against it, but make the player change strategies for different opponents. Or for a more complex opponent, it might have modes that it cycles through, and a different optimal strategy against each mode.

If this is a game with different environments, environments can give advantages to some strategies and disadvantages to others. An environment can include altered gravity or speed, a prejudice toward some type of magic (for example a day/night cycle might make lunar magic effective at night and ineffective during the day, an ice stage might make fire magic ineffective), obstacles to hide behind, holes to fall in, or other terrain that does damage such as spikes, timed lasers, lava, etc.


Basically, if you want the player to use different strategies at different times, you have to give the player different input at those times that changes the current optimal strategy.

What you've outlined has pretty much been done or is unfeasible (in real-time fighing games):

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More than just HP/MP 1 Life 2 Magic / Mana / Spirit Force 3 Strength / Power / Physical force 4 Stamina

if moves drain both magic and strength, players will have to keep looking up (or down) at two meters, which have the same effect of a single meter. Just have one.
Every technique spends stamina, and everything is a technique except moving, so stamina will constantly go down until you get stunned.
The thing is, when both players have low stamina, the fight is going to get really boring. Unless... one of the players turtles to conserve stamina.... which also makes for a boring fight.
Taking out stamina and merging both 2 and 3, you get the standard HP/MP.

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Magical elements at any given time you can only have a primary, secondary and tertiary specialization

With elements and slots to fit them in, each one granting moves... you'll end up with movesets for each character per each combination of elements, much like you can see in the old Samurai Shodown 3 & 4 (Bust/Slash modes)

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Timing Commit times and delays. Look at a game like Street Fighter, you do any technique, it happens instantly and then you keep going

This is the core of most fighters. Delay before the attack and delay after the attack.

The thing is, if you wanna do a great fighter, analyse the classics and the not so classic, and find out why they worked and why they didn't.

i can't help but instantly think of Fight Night Round 3. You can keep pounding away at the same thing over and over and just wear yourself out, or you can be more skillful and tactful and attack with purpose and on exposed areas. In reverse when defending you can block high and low endlessly and just cop a beating bit by bit, or you can attempt to parry the specific punch being thrown which then opens your opponent up for a heavy counter attack and really deal a hard blow... and then on top of this you then again have your strength and stamina to take into account as to if you can get the hit in time before the opponent recovers from your parry and gets their guard up again.

dont know if this helps, but something to think about maybe.

I am guessing that this is a Beat-em-up style game (because of your reference to street fighter).

One of the techniques used in most modern Beat-em-ups (and many of the older ones) is the timing system you mentioned. However, there is another system that they use which is Scissors/Paper/Rock.

In the scissors/paper/rock system, each choice has 1 or more counters. Like Scissors counters Paper which counters Rock which counters Scissors.

Fortunately it is not just limited to 3 options. You can easily construct virtually any sized system, as long as you stick to odd numbers of options (even numbers can be done, but they are a lot harder and often end up with trivial options that are identical to another - which make the system really have an odd number).

An example of a 5 way system:
Options A, B, C, D and E

A beats B and C
B beats C and D
C beats D and E
D beats E and A
E beats A and B


In this no choice is better (each counter two choices and is countered themselves by two other choices).

That one is called Symmetrical, but you can have Asymmetrical ones.

Like
A beats B, C and D
B beats C and E
C beats D and E
D beats C and E
E beats A


This too is a Scissors Paper Rock system, but it is not symmetrical like the previous one. It still retains the property that no choice is the best, but instead of there always being 2 options that a choice beats, and 2 choices that beat it, sometimes there is more or less than 2 choices that it can beat or be beaten by.

Are you sure you want it to be complicated?

The old game cliché "a minute to learn, a lifetime to master" is often a very good thing. Instead of making complicated logic, can you turn simple logic into a rich interplay of tactical/strategic choices?

Games like chess, go, and poker have clearly defined simple rules. Still, nobody has yet invented the optimal strategy. People play the same games year after year, without repeating the same routines each game. To create complex and interesting gameplay, you do not need complicated rules. What you probably need is a clearly defined set of choices, and let those choices affect the game situation in interesting ways.

Let's consider chess. On average, there are about 30 different moves you can do on your turn. What makes the game interesting is that there are about 100,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 different legal positions the pieces can be in. That's a whooping 10^50. This means that chess players always have a limited set of choices, but they almost always have to apply them in new and unforeseen situations. Also note that the choices they make absolutely determine the situation they are in. To me, this might just be the essence of good gameplay.

My three cents:
1. Give the players a varied but limited set of choices to make.
2. Make the world a complex but easily understandable mix of different intertwined parameters with practically infinite combinations.
3. Make the choices that the players make significantly change the state of the world.

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Are you sure you want it to be complicated?

You are right. Complicated is not the same as complex. A complicated system has many components that interact in a shallow manner. A complex system on the other hand, is one where there is a limited number of components but they interact deeply.

Chess is a good example of a complex system. There are only a limited number of moves (around 30 legal ones), but these combine together to create a massive amount of potential variations.

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My three cents: 1. Give the players a varied but limited set of choices to make. 2. Make the world a complex but easily understandable mix of different intertwined parameters with practically infinite combinations. 3. Make the choices that the players make significantly change the state of the world.

Those are very good rules of thumb, and I fully agree with you as far as it allows you to construct a system that is interesting. But, it doesn't guarantee that it will be fun.

Good gameplay is more than interesting choices (interesting choices are important, but not necessary and not the be all end all of good gameplay).

Games are primarily about fun. If the gameplay is not fun, only interesting, then the game might be interesting, but it is not fun.

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This means that chess players always have a limited set of choices, but they almost always have to apply them in new and unforeseen situations

Eh, not so much. Chess tends quickly from the openings to set patterns. Go is a much better game in this regard (and in the minute to learn/lifetime to master [branching factor] arena).

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Original post by Telastyn Eh, not so much. Chess tends quickly from the openings to set patterns.

Thanks for pointing that out :). I'm not a chess player myself, so I did not know that. I thought chess started out with "standard" openings and then quickly diverged wildly to converge back in the very end.

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Original post by juuso Thanks for pointing that out :). I'm not a chess player myself, so I did not know that. I thought chess started out with "standard" openings and then quickly diverged wildly to converge back in the very end.

I would tend to agree more with your initial assumption

However, there's probably not a lot of point in discussing how chess goes if you don't have a general idea of how to play it. It's a classic game, I doubt you'd have trouble finding someone who would like to kick your butt about 50 times until you catch on ;)