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Original post by kru I suggest that the interesting part of dungeon crawling is the enjoyment of long-haul resource management and constant, steady progress. In your example of long-haul resource management, you made the suggestion that the developer could provide a finite amount of resources during a delve into the dungeon, which can then be replenished when the player enters the next town. You suggest, however, that this type of game encourages conservation which you deem is boring or bad gameplay. I disagree that conservation is unfun. I also disagree that the long-haul resource manage necessarily implies conservation.

I think this depends a great deal on the maximum capacity of a resource, and how sparse restocking points are.

Really, the FPS ammo example could be tantamount to short-term resource management, if you can expect to find enough ammo for a battle or two after every couple battles. Sure, it doesn't regenerate on its own, but it regenerates sufficiently between encounters due to level design.

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Original post by Tangireon If you could also regenerate mana by idling on the map (out of battle), then why wouldn't the player choose to idle on the map rather than in the near end of a battle where they must take constant damage from remaining enemies? If you are able to regenerate mana by idling on the map as well as in battle, then the problem you are describing here wouldn't be a problem at all, except that the flow of gameplay would be riddled with constant idling breaks (especially bad for the conservative player). The use of potions and your end-of-combat mana recovery mechanic however, sort of combats that.

Well, the point of mana regeneration in-battle was as an element of short-term resource management. Rather than having mana-users run completely dry in a protracted battle, their mana would regenerate fast enough that they could keep up moderate to low mana use for an extended period of time, but could still temporarily run out if forced to use more mana than this. Being able to regenerate mana through idling is an unintentional side-effect of this.

You're right in that allowing idling out of combat to restore resources would probably keep people from intentionally drawing out battles (provided you're not likely to end up in another battle by waiting), but I don't think this really improves things.

Downtime is sort of an artificial form of attrition. If you can recover all of your resources safely, and without any real penalty for waiting, than the only 'cost' that you've imposed on the player is the player's own time / frustration.

And, of course, real time isn't even a relevant factor in a turn-based game. It's a lot less trouble to hold down the 'end turn' key to simulate 5 minutes worth of game-time than to actually sit around and do nothing for 5 minutes.

I've played games that did not allow you to rest in dungeons, yet restored a tiny amount of mana with each step. There were also no (or very few) random encounters so that, although there was no 'rest key', you could effectively rest to full by rapidly moving back and forth. Personally, I think if you can gain a tangible gameplay advantage by mind-numbingly spamming the left and right arrow keys as fast as you can, there's a problem.

This is probably an overly strong statement, and I'm sure I could find exceptions to it, but as a general rule I feel that if anything can be accomplished through mindless tedium without any real 'gameplay' involved, then it might as well be done for you. It's best not to encourage your players to do unfun things. If spamming movement keys is all that's required to rest to full, you may as well just let them rest to full, anyway.

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Original post by Tangireon Another way to persuade players to resolve battles as fast as possible is to make the amount of mana that is restored at the end of the battle be dependent on how fast they resolved the battle – quick encounters will restore more of your mana, while long, drawn-out battles will be more draining. This will also persuade players to use more of their higher-level skills/abilities to quash their opponents quickly.

I fear that this would unfairly penalize party compositions that focus more on endurance and a slow-and-steady approach as opposed to lots of front-loaded damage. (Considering the high damage party already has the benefit of being faster) It's very difficult to algorithmically determine when a player is stalling for time, or when it's legitimately taking them a long time to conclude a battle (say when the enemy group happens to be particularly strong against their group composition)

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Original post by Somnia Another suggestion would be to effectively have two mana bars. The first one has a short recovery time and is a limiting factor for all spells. The second you'd need a different name for, perhaps something like fatigue or concentration. Your concentration bar depletes slowly, but as is gets low it starts to decrease your rate of mana regeneration and also increases the chance of a high level spell fizzling out on you. So you can still attempt a high level spell when heavily fatigued but with some risk. High level spells would have more effect on your fatigue bar, so as a wizard gains levels he becomes able to use progressively more spells routinely.

I've considered a number of similar schemes. I'm just concerned that having two separate resource pools for each character, representing short-term and long-term resources, might add undesirable complexity (especially considering some classes already have a second class resource in addition to mana)

One such scheme involved all mana regeneration in battle, whether natural or through abilities, only adding 'temporary mana' which would disappear once battle was over. If you were using mana faster than you were regenerating it, you'd start drawing from your 'reserve', which does not regenerate in-battle. Even if your reserve was completely exhausted, you'd still be able to cast spells in battle, but would be strictly limited to your rate of in-battle regeneration.

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Original post by Telastyn Then I'd be classes that didn't have resource expenditure. I mean, if my character is useless (read: dead) after running out of arrows/mana then I'd avoid even coming close to being out of arrows/mana. It's less of a problem when you're controlling a party (since the tanks can often delay enough to flee) though.

I agree. And in fact I think that it often creates a balance issue between classes that have limited resources versus those whose are effectively unlimited. No matter what resource model I go with, I don't intend for magic-users to cast a few powerful spells, and then have to sit around being useless for the rest of the trip.

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Original post by Telastyn Honestly though, going back to the inn/town or sitting around waiting for mana is not fun. 'Dramatic tension' as you get closer to death is not fun for me. If you're making a dungeon crawler, then you want the player to dungeon crawl. Anything that pushes them towards 'recovery' and not explore/hack/slash is perhaps against the core game ideal.

To me, at least, this is not about going into 'recovery mode' versus 'delving mode'. The point of having limited resources, with the occasional recovery point, is that managing these resources when between recovery points is supposed to be part of the challenge of clearing these sections. If you can clear a little, then run back to town, clear a little more, then run back to town, you may as well just give the player their resources after combat is over and save them from having to make the trip.

Out of curiosity, if you were in a situation where you were dangerously low on health, but not on offensive or utility resources, would that be similarly unfun?

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Original post by Zarion You're right in that allowing idling out of combat to restore resources would probably keep people from intentionally drawing out battles (provided you're not likely to end up in another battle by waiting), but I don't think this really improves things. Downtime is sort of an artificial form of attrition. If you can recover all of your resources safely, and without any real penalty for waiting, than the only 'cost' that you've imposed on the player is the player's own time / frustration. And, of course, real time isn't even a relevant factor in a turn-based game. It's a lot less trouble to hold down the 'end turn' key to simulate 5 minutes worth of game-time than to actually sit around and do nothing for 5 minutes.

You could do just that then, apply the "Rest Button" feature to the map where you maneuver your character on. In Baldur's Gate and subsequent sequels, your "regenerative idling" consisted of simply pressing the rest button to which would skip over large amounts of time. This was also in Oblivion, in the form of the Wait Button. Occasionally during resting, enemies might come and attack you.

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Original post by Zarion I fear that this would unfairly penalize party compositions that focus more on endurance and a slow-and-steady approach as opposed to lots of front-loaded damage. (Considering the high damage party already has the benefit of being faster) It's very difficult to algorithmically determine when a player is stalling for time, or when it's legitimately taking them a long time to conclude a battle (say when the enemy group happens to be particularly strong against their group composition)

You don't need to make that difference; I would simply smack a timer on the battle screen, to which amount is derived from the amount of challenge the currently encountered foes are against your party (probably measure their Levels or Experience for instance). Go over, and no mana restore. Barely finish with time left over, little mana restore. Finish early, lots of mana restore.

Additionally, lots of things can naturally balance this out. High Damage classes, for instance, though may be able to deal lots of damage, are not able to last long when being dealt with damage themselves (Spellcasters, Archers, etc). Melee classes, though they don't deal much damage, are able to protect the Spellcasters by being in front of them (now I don't know how positioning works in your game, but I am going to assume this) as well as last a long time due to their high HP/Armor. And so on so forth. As long as your classes are all balanced out somehow, the player will naturally choose to mix and match their party - going all High Damage will make them drop dead quickly, while going all Melee is going to run them ragged, eventually dropping dead as well. The player is going to realize that the best party is one that is well-balanced with a mix of High Damage and Melee types. As you progress deeper in the game, the player is going to want to focus advancing the damage their High Damage party members deal, and the hitpoints of their Melee protectors have anyways.

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Some other ways to treat mana in your game:

1. You could make mana be a resource to which is derived by absorbing the "souls" of defeated enemies. In this way, your dungeon-romping journeys are supported by a steady source of fresh new enemies you slay as you go in deeper. This is very much like your end-of-combat mana restore mechanic, except it is based on body count rather than battle count, and because body count is a much smaller and more frequent unit of measurement than battle count, it could give cause to strategies such as hit and run, etc.

2. Alongside treating mana as a resource, you could also treat mana regeneration as a resource. For instance, lets say consuming Food items will cause mana to regenerate for a period of time (time to which depends on the quality/power of the Food consumed), to which won't regenerate otherwise (part of a mechanic I presented in this game). Thus, Food will be very important in short-term encounters where resting/idling isn't such a good idea - this gives your characters the ability to do other things in the midst of combat than to mess around with items.

3. You could simply put the feeling of long-term resource diminishment on another type of resource (such as Food) rather than putting it on mana if you don't like having players to conserve mana for each battle.

[Edited by - Tangireon on April 30, 2009 12:04:13 PM]

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Original post by Zarion To me, at least, this is not about going into 'recovery mode' versus 'delving mode'. The point of having limited resources, with the occasional recovery point, is that managing these resources when between recovery points is supposed to be part of the challenge of clearing these sections. If you can clear a little, then run back to town, clear a little more, then run back to town, you may as well just give the player their resources after combat is over and save them from having to make the trip.

Indeed.

At that point though you run into the problem of 'what happens when you fail?'. Playing through the (entire) section again because you didn't manage resources is kinda lame.

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Out of curiosity, if you were in a situation where you were dangerously low on health, but not on offensive or utility resources, would that be similarly unfun?

It is not so much the limited resources/health that I find unfun but actual adrenaline due to tension. Danger in and of itself is not fun for me (but to be fair, is very fun for many people).

Limited resources are great. I love tactical RPGs. Any of the console style variants (Disgaea, FFT, etc), PC style (XCOM, Roguelikes, etc), and even standard RPGs (D&D ports, Fallout, etc)... they're all the sort of games I love to play.

But the fun there is managing resources and making tactical decisions, not the pressure that the last few levels you've beaten will be in vain if your now weary party doesn't make it to the resupply point or because you didn't leave yourself enough mana to deal with this new threat.


Personally, I think that the traditional model of limited resources is good. Tactical resources (arrows, mana, health) last per combat. Strategic resources (how to level up your party, how to outfit your guys, who to hire/create/bring along) impact the longer term success of your play.

The Avernum series of games have an interesting solution to this. After battle is over, "first aid" is applied which heals some health and mana. The amount actually healed depends on how many monsters were killed and maybe how strong they were, and the characters' first aid skill. In this way, excessive resource conservation is punished, because you can't gain mana from the first aid if you're at the maximum. But excessive resource use is also punished, because if you use all your mana to kill weak monsters, you will only gain some of it back at the end of the fight. I think it strikes a nice balance between resource use/conservation. Avernum is a turn-based RPG, so this type of approach works best there, but I think with some thought it could be adapted to work in a real time game.

Facing a bigger bad after the supposed 'biggest' bad, in which a player (or party) isn't necessarily bad. It can add a lot of drama and challenge if done correctly. In my experience, throwing a bigger bad at a party that's just wasted all of their good spells and whatnot on a supposed final boss does get moans of pain, but inevitably the battle becomes far more intense and, in the end, rewarding than the original boss fight (well, minus the casting of awesome spells). It completely changes the dynamic from 'dish out major damage' to 'try and survive, while trying to wear down the boss'.

I've been thinking about this problem as it relates to health, but I suppose it's relevant to mana too. Suppose we have, in a sense, two mana meters. The main one is the one that regenerates quickly, as soon as you get a rest, stop fighting, or whatever. The point is that it regenerates quickly.

However, if you beat up your mana points or health or whatever, the secondary mana meter kicks in (these scales are probably represented by different colored regions on the bar on the screen). When this meter goes down, your mana won't recharge past a certain point, dictated by how much of this secondary amount you have. It basically represents your capacity to recharge your "actual" mana. Policies for recharging this one could vary. It could either restore itself very slowly, have to be restored with health packs, or more likely some combination.

This way, if you fight some little guy, you stay completely in the auto-recharge zone and don't suffer much for it. If you fight a medium-difficulty enemy, you may decrease your recharge-capacity meter, and have to find some health eventually or just stay out of trouble long enough for it to come back. If you fight a big guy, though, you're going to seriously deplete both meters, leaving you permanently weakened until you get some health.

The cool thing about it is that it more realistically simulates actual human fatigue, both physical and mental. Properly calibrated, I think something like this would solve the problem, at least for health/mana type resources.

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Original post by Telastyn It is not so much the limited resources/health that I find unfun but actual adrenaline due to tension. Danger in and of itself is not fun for me (but to be fair, is very fun for many people).

Point taken. It's sometimes worth being reminded that some things are not as universal as we might take for granted.

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Limited resources are great. I love tactical RPGs. Any of the console style variants (Disgaea, FFT, etc), PC style (XCOM, Roguelikes, etc), and even standard RPGs (D&D ports, Fallout, etc)... they're all the sort of games I love to play.

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Personally, I think that the traditional model of limited resources is good. Tactical resources (arrows, mana, health) last per combat. Strategic resources (how to level up your party, how to outfit your guys, who to hire/create/bring along) impact the longer term success of your play.

A number of the games you mention, though, have a significant number of non-regenerating resources, at least within the scope of a single area. Most tactical RPGs do not, but battles in those games are almost always designed to individually be a credible challenge (and are correspondingly few in number). The amount versus duration of battles that I conceive for this game would be somewhere between a typical jRPG and a typical tactical RPG (meaning that they probably should not all be so individually challenging)

Roguelikes have a large number of non-regenerating resources (potions, scrolls, etc.), and depending on the game, you mightn't even be able to buy replacements. And even though primary resources (health/mana) can be restored through resting, because battles are not discrete (monsters can wander along at any time), it's quite possible to be caught unexpectedly unable to rest (so resource management is also relevant outside the bounds of a single discrete combat)

I haven't played any of the Fallouts, but a number of DnD games don't allow you to recover spells freely while in dungeons, even between encounters.

Really, making tactical resources regenerate fully after each combat was my first inclination for my game. But assuming that the resultant tension of finite resources isn't universally desirable, still leaves one major issue, I think: how to make fights which neither consume resources nor have any real chance of killing the party be meaningful.

The game that most comes to mind when I think of this is Legend of Mana, actually. Health regenerated to full after each battle, and virtually no battle had a real chance of critically injuring you. Thus, battles were little but time-wasters.

I would probably implement a way to auto-resolve or skip fights that were truly trivial, but the problem lies with fights that are threatening enough to actually require you to play them, but not threatening enough to actually defeat you if you're paying attention to them. I'm generally inclined to think that anything which consumes a non-trivial amount of time, but which you can't really lose at, is basically busy-work. Obviously, you could simply make every battle difficult, but I'm not too much a fan of that, either, as explained previously.

This topic feels a lot like the health topic, "do you want regening health or a consistent health that comes back when you pick up med-packs". The answer seems to be almost unanimously the regen system. The answer is pretty simple. The short regen system allows for each encounter to be harder.

I think your conclusion that the shorter regen system will take away from the "dread" feeling of running low on resources. This is experience game play, and I'll always advise avoiding such systems, because it forces the player to imagine himself of the shoes of the avatar. If this bond doesn't happen, the game is lost. In addition, games based on experience game play have much shorter replay values.

Give your game both if you must. A quick regen mana system with a large ammunition pack.

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Original post by Zarionhow to make fights which neither consume resources nor have any real chance of killing the party be meaningful.

Those small battles serve a purpose. Each battle is a challenge to overcome. Each challenge has a bar of ability required to overcome it. If your player (or player's character) lacks the requisite ability, the battle lets her know. If a level 1 player enters the evil bosses final dungeon of doom, then she get splattered by the wandering hell demons and learns not to attempt that area until later.

"But my game won't allow the player to wander off like that!" you say. Well, if your game is linear enough that the player is never in an area outside the scope of her abilities, then remove the trivial battles. If the battle offers no meaningful challenge, then it is merely an element of "grind." There are plenty of examples on how to achieve this. The original Dragon Warrior, for instance, had an item that would prevent weak battles from occurring. Only monsters that had a moderate change of damaging the player would appear in battles.

One game you may want to look at is Chrono Cross for PS1. Each character had a set number of skills per skill level that they could use in any single encounter. For example, the would have something like 4 lvl1 skills, 3 lvl2 skills and maybe 1 lvl3 skill. Once the player used that skill it was no longer usuable for the rest of the combat encounter. Yet on the next encounter their skills would be back up to the maximum values. However the player still had to manage character health between fights which he could replenish with potions. He couldn't use healing skills outside combat however so if he was low on potions he'd have to willingly engage in combat and try to win the encounter with higher hp than he went in with. On top of that in combat each character gained action points as combat proceeded and skills that were higher in level would consume more action points, potentially causing the character to not be able to act for quite some time.

It basically comes down to making several different sets of resources that have to be managed, ones that only exist in the scope of a single combat encounter and ones that persist between encounters.