The rpg project I'm working on is largely conventional and unoriginal for the most part, except where actual strategy comes in.
I was heavily influenced by the late portion of Final Fantasy V.
For those that haven't played through this game, most of it isn't necessarily worth of mention except, obviously, for the last couple levels where bosses, sub-bosses and optional bosses have one thing in common: they rock, gameplay-wise.

They aren't like Chrono Trigger, where a pattern must be identified by the player and replicated to win (i.e. Magus' magical shield system). Aka, there isn't only one way to do it. Though some of them may fall to constant "attacking", most won't, or at least, not unless you have planned your way through. 1 of them will even killl you before the battle start if you haven't geared yourself appropriately.
The botom line is an unforgiving level of bosses, and each victory is that much more satisfying. Having so many sub-bosses and bosses in a row also increases the tempo of the game culminating into the final boss of the game.

While I didn't want my game to feel exactly like that, I liked the idea of challenging battles that required a lot of "outside of battle planning". Equipment is one thing, but the idea of customizable skillsets allows to capitalize on an aspect of gameplay scarcely found within most rpgs (menus). In fact, most rpgs are 70% battle, 25% exploration and 5% others (give or take). I think there is untapped potential in party customization, hence the need for more customizable skills.

To answer your concern regarding choices, I do agree that having the player making choices and have to survive the consequences is something that brings strategy. But I also feel that making this choice with extremely limited information concerning what is coming next, this choice is not very strategic; its a flavor guess. The thought behind Diablo 3's exclusion of skill points is similar: it is not necessarily that players didn't make the right choices upfront, but it is that they couldn't possibly know what was coming up next. A portion of unknown is necessary to most strategic decisions to be meaningful, but pitch black intel make choices cosmetic.

Allowing the player to cycle skillsets around removes "permanent choices" but does not remove strategy in my book. Before every battle, the player is given the choice to alter his entire plan, but his resources are still limited, and restrictions still apply (using healing instead of an attack is a choice, and even if you can switch back and forth out of battle, once the battle has started, your choice has been set, and it will define whether you win or lose, depending on whether you can make the most of your choices).
The danger with this idea is that players may end up spending too much time between battles changing their skillset. "ok, new room, now I need this and that" syndrome.


(2) - Dropping so many crystals would feel like a cheap currency, and I really want to have an approach where each bit of them matters. Each of them will have that much more of an impact. So what if there are only 25 of them in the entire game? There's enough to make a choice although I reckon 25 might be a bit of an extreme...


As a sidenote to poor retro RPG design concerning battle, though I agree many of them could be forced/rushed through, it also meant that you were grinding.
In a way, your punishment for not acting cleverly within the game was to spend time power-leveling through grinding. A player that sought to truly exploit the enemies' weaknesses has a much more gratifying experience than the one relying upon "fight". The player's punishment for choosing the worse strategy (fight) was to spend more time between rewards (bits of story, etc). This is unfortunately a negative reinforcement mechanism, but it did exist from the get-go. I agree with Tiblanc that many games have attempted to fix that in one way or another, but I feel that these fixes are often too restrictive (as I have mentionned regarding Chrono Cross). If the player's endgame is to power-level and use the fight-command, by all means, allow him too, but don't just lower the game difficulty to allow him to have a good time through; make sure he pays for this. The harsher you make him pay for this, the more likely he is to investigate "other means" and succeed at finding alternative strategies.

(2) - Dropping so many crystals would feel like a cheap currency, and I really want to have an approach where each bit of them matters. Each of them will have that much more of an impact. So what if there are only 25 of them in the entire game? There's enough to make a choice although I reckon 25 might be a bit of an extreme...

Golden Sun on the GBA used a system like this. You could find spirits(or however they were called) of a given element and assign them to your characters. Depending on which element you assigned to the characters, they would gain skills and stats. That was a nice system since you had to do tradeoffs and could not get everything at the same time. It was like what you want to achieve, no permanent choices with strategic planning.

Will look into this. Thanks for the pointer.
For future refs: They are called Djinns

Before I begin, lemme introduce some games that may contribute to what you hope to achieve.

1) The Sonny series on Kongregate:

Kongregate: Sonny 1

Kongregate: Sonny 2


2) The Monster's Den series (the creator compiled all previous versions into a single game, which I've linked below), which utilizes the Double Line placement from Lost Odyssey.

Kongregate: Monster's Den

There are many other good RPGs on that website (if you have the time, heh), most notably those that are showing up on the front page. (Though some of the good ones have fallen off the front page. Anything with over 1m+ to 2m plays are generally a good pick.)

Onto the response.

[quote name='taneugene' timestamp='1312487020' post='4844653']
Also, how do you reconciliate an RPG with strategy? RPG by definition allows players to do whatever they please, and whatever decisions they make should allow them to clear the game regardless of how good or bad the decision is. Strategy, on the other hand, requires the player to fail an encounter if they picked the wrong strategy to employ against a particular enemy. The way most RPGs are designed, players can brute force their way through every encounter if they max out every aspect of their character, throwing strategy right out the window. In fact, by the end-game of most RPGs, Magic and Status-Effects are nigh useless because almost all the encounters in the end-game are immune to those things (Boss-encounters, regardless of levels, are especially notorious for this). The only way to win those encounters is via physical beatdown. In addition, the end-game encounters have much more powerful Magic and Status-Effects embedded into their attack-cycle, forcing you to don Anti-Element and Anti-Status armors. At this point, you can't help but to think "Strategy? What strategy?".

I have to disagree. Combats in RPGs are all about strategic planning and tactical execution. The brute force wins all phenomenon is caused by the shallow combat system used by old RPGs. Some RPGs have added a layer on top of the classic combat system, like Lost Odyssey. The early game is highly strategic due to the back line defense mechanic. You can't hit Attack forever and plow through everything. It sorts of break down toward the end though because you can equip everything and become godly. As long as you keep meaningful choices throughout the game, the strategic element should be there.
[/quote]


Here is two questions for you: (1) What is an RPG? and (2) Why does strategic gameplay have to breakdown in the end-game when it was doing fine in the early-game? (In other words, why must the character become so damn godly in the endgame?)

Also another point to note, of all the RPGs I've played, the early-game can be quite challenging especially if its your first playthrough and you refuse to read the FAQs. I remember quitting a few games because I can't get past the early level bosses, only to come back to it later and completing it a few times. Because I've refused to read FAQs (if I can help it) for the games that I quit, I rely on the old method of brute-forcing my way through the game by grinding power early on. When doing that, I've stayed ahead of the encounter in terms of power level, to a point where I could farm those encounters. From that point on I never died from any normal encounters (normal as in the encounters within the main storyline funnel).

And then you have extra-normal encounters (yes, I refuse to call them abnormal). These are usually dungeons that are not involved in the main storyline designed to provide challenge to overpowered characters. To even stand a chance against these encounters, you must necessarily make your characters uber-powerful. Even then, these encounters can and will eat your uber-characters for breakfast, lunch and dinner. Power is a pre-requisite to play in these type of encounters. The more power you have, the more chance you have to survive it.

The rpg project I'm working on is largely conventional and unoriginal for the most part, except where actual strategy comes in.
I was heavily influenced by the late portion of Final Fantasy V.
For those that haven't played through this game, most of it isn't necessarily worth of mention except, obviously, for the last couple levels where bosses, sub-bosses and optional bosses have one thing in common: they rock, gameplay-wise.


They aren't like Chrono Trigger, where a pattern must be identified by the player and replicated to win (i.e. Magus' magical shield system). Aka, there isn't only one way to do it. Though some of them may fall to constant "attacking", most won't, or at least, not unless you have planned your way through. 1 of them will even killl you before the battle start if you haven't geared yourself appropriately.
The bottom line is an unforgiving level of bosses, and each victory is that much more satisfying. Having so many sub-bosses and bosses in a row also increases the tempo of the game culminating into the final boss of the game.


Question: Why do they rock? Specifically, what kind of mechanics did they implement that makes them rock? Perhaps your explanation might solve your own dilemmas.

While I didn't want my game to feel exactly like that, I liked the idea of challenging battles that required a lot of "outside of battle planning". Equipment is one thing, but the idea of customizable skillsets allows to capitalize on an aspect of gameplay scarcely found within most rpgs (menus). In fact, most rpgs are 70% battle, 25% exploration and 5% others (give or take). I think there is untapped potential in party customization, hence the need for more customizable skills.


Refer to the Sonny game above. That might fall in line with what you had in mind. Also, practically all MMOs allow for skill customization, unfortunately it lead to a min-maxing mindset where alot of skills are left unused by players in favour of optimizing their characters. Contemplate that for a moment. Do you want players to min-max their character, or do you want them to use every skill that is available in the game? Depending on the answer it could lead to different mechanics.

To answer your concern regarding choices, I do agree that having the player making choices and have to survive the consequences is something that brings strategy. But I also feel that making this choice with extremely limited information concerning what is coming next, this choice is not very strategic; its a flavor guess. The thought behind Diablo 3's exclusion of skill points is similar: it is not necessarily that players didn't make the right choices upfront, but it is that they couldn't possibly know what was coming up next. A portion of unknown is necessary to most strategic decisions to be meaningful, but pitch black intel make choices cosmetic.


The thing is, how do you give the players such information? Any player going through the game first time wouldn't know what to expect from a monster. They must react to the encounter with whatever choices they have at their disposal (unless they go and look it up at GameFAQ).


That also brings out another point: GameFAQs. If the player's original solution doesn't work and all his trial-and-error ended up in defeat, they will be sorely tempted to look it up and learn how to defeat the encounter from someone else. That can potentially lead them to rely on the FAQ whenever they are stuck. Every "optimum" way to solve the encounter is readily available at their fingertips, which means they do not need to think hard to come up with a solution. Do you still call that "strategy"? Or did it just turn into "Find the correct answer to win this scenario?"

Allowing the player to cycle skillsets around removes "permanent choices" but does not remove strategy in my book. Before every battle, the player is given the choice to alter his entire plan, but his resources are still limited, and restrictions still apply (using healing instead of an attack is a choice, and even if you can switch back and forth out of battle, once the battle has started, your choice has been set, and it will define whether you win or lose, depending on whether you can make the most of your choices).
The danger with this idea is that players may end up spending too much time between battles changing their skillset. "ok, new room, now I need this and that" syndrome.


I suggested "Mode Switching" in the earlier versions. All the choices remains available, but players must pay a cost before their characters can access these alternate options. Perhaps there is your solution: Cost and Effect for picking the wrong choice. Allow players a somewhat slim chance to win despite employing the wrong strategy, but make them pay a hefty price to win.


Players can access all their skills and change them on-the-fly with some sort of penalty or extreme cost. (I.E. Player's default hotkeys only have Attack-Spells on them. Player needs to heal. Player can gain access to Heal by paying 2x the original Mana Cost and missing the next turn.) That way players do not have to spend a lot of time out-of-battle to reconfigure their skillset. They are allowed to play how they want to play, but they are punished for not optimizing their skillset.

(2) - Dropping so many crystals would feel like a cheap currency, and I really want to have an approach where each bit of them matters. Each of them will have that much more of an impact. So what if there are only 25 of them in the entire game? There's enough to make a choice although I reckon 25 might be a bit of an extreme...


Consider these scenarios:
1) If you were to limit the number of "crystals" available in game, you would have to make each "crystal" that much more powerful to compensate for the low quantity. In effect, you might have turned the "crystals" into something along the lines of Final Fantasy's "Meter Attacks" (Limit Breaks/Trance/Overdrive/Quickenings/etc.)


2) Do you allow players to "stack" the gems to improve a particular skill? If you do, then players might end up with one or two Super-Skills that can virtually wipe out anything they encounter.


3) If you plan on retaining their original power level and not allow them to "stack" their gems, you risk turning them into an obsolete skill where players feel they are "not worth using".



As a sidenote to poor retro RPG design concerning battle, though I agree many of them could be forced/rushed through, it also meant that you were grinding.
In a way, your punishment for not acting cleverly within the game was to spend time power-leveling through grinding. A player that sought to truly exploit the enemies' weaknesses has a much more gratifying experience than the one relying upon "fight". The player's punishment for choosing the worse strategy (fight) was to spend more time between rewards (bits of story, etc). This is unfortunately a negative reinforcement mechanism, but it did exist from the get-go. I agree with Tiblanc that many games have attempted to fix that in one way or another, but I feel that these fixes are often too restrictive (as I have mentionned regarding Chrono Cross). If the player's endgame is to power-level and use the fight-command, by all means, allow him too, but don't just lower the game difficulty to allow him to have a good time through; make sure he pays for this. The harsher you make him pay for this, the more likely he is to investigate "other means" and succeed at finding alternative strategies.

Similar to the above regarding "information": How do you know what the enemy's weakness is without first encountering them? From all the games I've played, the only time I know what an enemy can do is when I enter battle and we hit each other to determine the enemy's weakness and how much damage they can do. Any game with a monster encyclopedia requires the character to encounter said monster before information is made available to them. That leads to two train of thoughts: (1) Player must fail most encounters to obtain information and try again; or (2) Players can defeat the encounter regardless of information they have.


Also, you are forgetting that sometimes players see "Gears" and "Stats" and "Levels" and "Skill-Tree" as reward, perhaps even more so than the cutscenes and the story bits (I'm guilty of skipping cutscenes and dialogue boxes). Why? Because these things are a sign of achievement influenced by the player's effort. When they get new toys to play with, they naturally want to test it out, and see how much more powerful their character have become. Sometimes they even deviate from the main story just to challenge the hidden dungeons to prove they can. Sometimes the mini-games and sidequests are much more fun than completing the main game (Also guilty of this because I've replayed FFX just for the Blitzball bits).


If the player enjoys the grind to make their characters more and more powerful, there really is no punishment because once they've achieved the limits of the game, they can blow through the main storyline very, very quickly.


With regards to the difficulty setting, I'm not sure I'm following so I am going to assume that you thought the "scale difficulty to 50% power level" means to "lower the difficulty by 50%". That isn't what I meant at all. For most RPGs, you do not need a 100% completion to beat the game. Similarly, these RPG games contain items that make your character beyond godly. I am going to use the Final Fantasy X as an example. In that game, you have abilities like Auto-Regen, Auto-Potion, Auto-Phoenix, Auto-Shell, Auto-Protect, Break Damage Limit, Break HP Limit and One MP Cost. You do not need any of these abilities to win the game. In fact, in the final encounter in the main storyline, it was designed to ensure that you will win regardless of how lousy your characters are. Obtaining all those skills I mentioned is equivalent to having "100% Power Level". You do not need those abilities to win the game, and as such your characters can win without "100% Power Level". When I say to base encounters around "50% Power Level", that means basing your encounters on characters that have learned most (if not all) the skills but did not bother to upgrade them.


If that was not what you meant, do clarify.

Here is two questions for you: (1) What is an RPG? and (2) Why does strategic gameplay have to breakdown in the end-game when it was doing fine in the early-game? (In other words, why must the character become so damn godly in the endgame?)

1. RPG is too broad to properly define it. Here it means console style RPGs where you have some predefined story and are almost on rails fighting baddies along the way with more or less options to grow your characters.

2. I never said strategic gameplay has to breakdown in the end-game, I said many games breakdown in the end-game because of poor design decisions. In the case of Lost Odyssey, it was because in the early game, your characters had few skill slots and the available skills were rather weak(50% damage reduction from an element). In the end-game, you had over 20 slots and had access to skills that would completely nullify an element or heal you instead of damage you. I remember having so many skill slots that I would fill them with whatever was left. Providing no choice to the player makes for a boring game.

Also another point to note, of all the RPGs I've played, the early-game can be quite challenging especially if its your first playthrough and you refuse to read the FAQs. I remember quitting a few games because I can't get past the early level bosses, only to come back to it later and completing it a few times. Because I've refused to read FAQs (if I can help it) for the games that I quit, I rely on the old method of brute-forcing my way through the game by grinding power early on. When doing that, I've stayed ahead of the encounter in terms of power level, to a point where I could farm those encounters. From that point on I never died from any normal encounters (normal as in the encounters within the main storyline funnel).

It must be because I've been playing these games for the better part of the last 2 decades, but I don't find them to be all that hard early game. They usually make the early game easy so you can progress rapidly and get hooked on the story. If you have to read FAQs, then the designed failed in my opinion. Proper pacing is very important to maintain an acceptable challenge throughout the game. A game without challenge will not be remembered down the road.

I've already played Sonny (though I have never finished it).
And monster's den feels a bit like like an oldschool first rpg I've played before.
(Believe it or not, I'm a big Kongregate fan)

Question: Why do they rock? Specifically, what kind of mechanics did they implement that makes them rock? Perhaps your explanation might solve your own dilemmas.
[/quote]

Simply put? Because the way to beat them is not straightforward in two ways:
1 - You won't figure it out simply by looking at them, you need some form of investigation (customizing your gear is one of the ways)
2 - There isn't just one way to beat it, but there are a lot of ways to fail against it. That way, the player can be crafty enough to devise his own strategy and feel proud for defeating the opponent, something I find very much akin to pride in TCGs.

Examples:
- Woodsprite has a believable AI so to speak. If you were her, given her skills, she generally uses what you'd use. You attack her with magic? Walling up. Etc. Looks fairly simple, but it goes a long way, yet, she isn't challenging per se (she is the first boss of the Void).
- Catastroph has a very deadly quake-based attack, and will cast gravity if you try to float. Of course, you *could* try to beat it through power-leveling (it does take quite a while though) or figure to equip an item you might have discarded years ago that casts float permanently on your character.
- Azulmagia will be awesome against you if you are not careful. If your character level is a multiple of 2, you're screwed because one of his attacks deals with that. There's more to him, but the mere idea you need to "come prepared" (have odd numbered levels) is enough to keep you guessing.
- Alte Roit is a common sub-boss that will force you to fight with one less character.
- Halcyanos will turn you to frogs. You need to find a way to avoid that or be unable to damage him. He isn't strong per se, but he prevents you from being in your comfort zone.

Basically, many evils have been locked into that dimension, and each and everyone of them have their own personality which reflects heavily on how the battle goes. It is a great melting pot of fights, (nearly 33% of the entire game's bosses occur in the last level).

That is the reason why I thought "constant" or "near-constant" challenge would keep the game interesting instead of fights based on attrition. Most random encounters are just that: weaklings you can kill easily but which will have a toll on your global hp, thus, your overall resource. They only force you to go back, not to think.

Refer to the Sonny game above. That might fall in line with what you had in mind. Also, practically all MMOs allow for skill customization, unfortunately it lead to a min-maxing mindset where alot of skills are left unused by players in favour of optimizing their characters. Contemplate that for a moment. Do you want players to min-max their character, or do you want them to use every skill that is available in the game? Depending on the answer it could lead to different mechanics.
[/quote]

I really want the player to have access to nearly all skills in the game (save a few ones that would rely purely on choices). The strategy won't come from choosing the right path, but from making the right micro-decisions before and after a fight. Preparing for the unknown before each level based on knowledge. This can be done in various ways, but the level itself should inspire what lurks within (an ice cave is filled with monsters that don't quite like heat). I do not plan to have many NPCs in the game, but each of them will be critical (no spot fillers). One of them is already setup to be the gossip-dude aka, the guy that lets you into some 'secrets' he heard about. What may lurk in levels may be much easier to kill if you know what it is upfront, and more importantly, where it is coming from... Could also let you know if there is a hard counter laying around in an optional dungeon to kill it, but not too often obviously.

The thing is, how do you give the players such information? Any player going through the game first time wouldn't know what to expect from a monster. They must react to the encounter with whatever choices they have at their disposal (unless they go and look it up at GameFAQ).
[/quote]

I've clued you in a bit about my strategy up there, but I think another crucial element is making 'death' less punitive. If trial and error don't require you to start over from far away, you are less likely to invest time looking up on FAQs than to try again with something else. It is one of the ways I want to encourage players to 'explore' the game's strategy. I think an important flaw of Radiant Historia is having failed to capitalize entirely on their genuinely good mechanic. For those not familiar with the title, the game is all about going back and forth through 'events' of time and start in a different way. My personal take would be that if you would die, the game let's you choose a different outcome by starting over (in Mystic Quest, death in battle is replaced by a 'give up yes/no' screen which resets the battle). I want something slightly similar, a bit like Prince of Persia's Forgotten Sands (Wii).

That also brings out another point: GameFAQs. If the player's original solution doesn't work and all his trial-and-error ended up in defeat, they will be sorely tempted to look it up and learn how to defeat the encounter from someone else. That can potentially lead them to rely on the FAQ whenever they are stuck. Every "optimum" way to solve the encounter is readily available at their fingertips, which means they do not need to think hard to come up with a solution. Do you still call that "strategy"? Or did it just turn into "Find the correct answer to win this scenario?"
[/quote]

I try to cater to all audiences possible, but obviously, some will always look up the 'best way' to do it. I really want to avoid hard counters in game, aka, minimize the occurrence of 'the best way to kill this is that'. As I said, I am trying to complexify encounters in that regard to ensure that there are many viable strategies, and a lot more lethal strategies. Finding 'one that works' is generally all it takes to proceed. Finding a generally better way may simply earn you more (encounter loot varies based on certain tactics in-battle). A player will generally learn more quickly through trial and error than he would if he read an entire FAQ.
On the other hand, if the game is successful enough to appeal to a large community of fans, which in turn decide to create a FAQ or wiki, I think more than half of my initial goal will be complete: making a good game. It will have achieved at least some popularity!

I suggested "Mode Switching" in the earlier versions. All the choices remains available, but players must pay a cost before their characters can access these alternate options. Perhaps there is your solution: Cost and Effect for picking the wrong choice. Allow players a somewhat slim chance to win despite employing the wrong strategy, but make them pay a hefty price to win.


Players can access all their skills and change them on-the-fly with some sort of penalty or extreme cost. (I.E. Player's default hotkeys only have Attack-Spells on them. Player needs to heal. Player can gain access to Heal by paying 2x the original Mana Cost and missing the next turn.) That way players do not have to spend a lot of time out-of-battle to reconfigure their skillset. They are allowed to play how they want to play, but they are punished for not optimizing their skillset.
[/quote]

Your new suggestion works much better. It allows one to use what they need 'now' at the cost of a steep cost 'now' AND 'later' (doubled mana cost + time cost).
Given my specific game mechanics, I can easily replace the turn skip by additional time delay on the gauge, and it would probably be easy to implement given how its been designed/developed.
As you said, this could solve a portion of my problem.

Consider these scenarios:
1) If you were to limit the number of "crystals" available in game, you would have to make each "crystal" that much more powerful to compensate for the low quantity. In effect, you might have turned the "crystals" into something along the lines of Final Fantasy's "Meter Attacks" (Limit Breaks/Trance/Overdrive/Quickenings/etc.)


2) Do you allow players to "stack" the gems to improve a particular skill? If you do, then players might end up with one or two Super-Skills that can virtually wipe out anything they encounter.


3) If you plan on retaining their original power level and not allow them to "stack" their gems, you risk turning them into an obsolete skill where players feel they are "not worth using".
[/quote]

What you put into light here is that there is a need to differentiate what gives you the skills from what empowers them.

1) I'm not too sure I understand, is that supposedly bad? (I haven't played much of ff7 if that is what you are referring to).

2) Definitely not. There are not enough crystals to allow that. I don't want the player to choose between "here's a cool new skill, who do you put it into / what variant do you want" and "what skills do you want to make strong?".

3) Skills could scale up with levels and stats. That way, they would remain relevant. Also, not every skill will be about sheer damage and, believe it or not, status effects will be relevant even against bosses, though I won't go into details regarding this here.

But this does bring us straight back to my initial post:

Following Diablo 3's announcement of dropping skill points, there was a large turmoil where people debated whether it was a good or a bad thing, and whether the system they've developed is better.[/quote]

Similar to the above regarding "information": How do you know what the enemy's weakness is without first encountering them? From all the games I've played, the only time I know what an enemy can do is when I enter battle and we hit each other to determine the enemy's weakness and how much damage they can do. Any game with a monster encyclopedia requires the character to encounter said monster before information is made available to them. That leads to two train of thoughts: (1) Player must fail most encounters to obtain information and try again; or (2) Players can defeat the encounter regardless of information they have.
[/quote]

Level Design.

The idea is that you want the player to 'suffer' the first fight somehow. A simple enemy will look tough because it tells the player 'hey, you need to adapt if you come in here!'
Other monsters in the level will be increasingly stronger, tougher, if you did not adapt to this new threat. But if you have found a way to overcome their specific 'rule-changer' the level can be beaten. Hopefully, these monsters should even give you an hint as to what you might face for a boss at the end (if any). However, should you die, as I've stated earlier, your 'death' should not revert your progress. Your death should only encourage you to explore the mechanics and find another way around. This is the foundation of a puzzle. When you try to put a piece somewhere it does not belong, the whole puzzle doesn't break. It simply allows you to try something else. The only measure of progress you have lost is the one that lead you to place your piece where it did not belong (the erroneous part). You've come to a battle you are unfit for, you need to stand back, adapt, and try again.

Also, you are forgetting that sometimes players see "Gears" and "Stats" and "Levels" and "Skill-Tree" as reward, perhaps even more so than the cutscenes and the story bits (I'm guilty of skipping cutscenes and dialogue boxes). Why? Because these things are a sign of achievement influenced by the player's effort. When they get new toys to play with, they naturally want to test it out, and see how much more powerful their character have become. Sometimes they even deviate from the main story just to challenge the hidden dungeons to prove they can. Sometimes the mini-games and sidequests are much more fun than completing the main game (Also guilty of this because I've replayed FFX just for the Blitzball bits).
[/quote]

I fail to see where I have forgotten that. The core idea is to influence the players to go to these sidequests, which will provide gear, stats, and skills (arguably even levels are experience points will be rewarded for actions, not just fighting). I'm an 'achiever' so I really wanted the game content to revolve around optional stuff.

If the player enjoys the grind to make their characters more and more powerful, there really is no punishment because once they've achieved the limits of the game, they can blow through the main storyline very, very quickly.
[/quote]

The nature of the punishment is precisely the time spent grinding. Based on progression curve, the player will have to grind every now and then to ensure the following portion of the level is easy to blaze through. If the player doesn't enjoy grinding, but does it for the sake of lowering the difficulty, then grinding time is his punishment, definitely not playing time!
And if they like to grind? Well that's splendid, because they can.

With regards to the difficulty setting, I'm not sure I'm following so I am going to assume that you thought the "scale difficulty to 50% power level" means to "lower the difficulty by 50%". That isn't what I meant at all. For most RPGs, you do not need a 100% completion to beat the game. Similarly, these RPG games contain items that make your character beyond godly. I am going to use the Final Fantasy X as an example. In that game, you have abilities like Auto-Regen, Auto-Potion, Auto-Phoenix, Auto-Shell, Auto-Protect, Break Damage Limit, Break HP Limit and One MP Cost. You do not need any of these abilities to win the game. In fact, in the final encounter in the main storyline, it was designed to ensure that you will win regardless of how lousy your characters are. Obtaining all those skills I mentioned is equivalent to having "100% Power Level". You do not need those abilities to win the game, and as such your characters can win without "100% Power Level". When I say to base encounters around "50% Power Level", that means basing your encounters on characters that have learned most (if not all) the skills but did not bother to upgrade them.
[/quote]

While I agree with your reasoning (because I find a certain pride in completing sidequests, beating optional bosses, etc) many players will argue that this is unecessary. Their reasoning makes sense:
Why would I want the Ragnarok when I can kill the final boss with the Excalibur. Why would I kill uber-giga boss to get the Ragnarok when I can kill the final boss without it and still get the ending?

There are various of options I've decided to go with for my game. In fact, the game's ending (and a few turning points) are branching within the game.
Actually, you even get to choose who the final boss is. This can get somewhat complex, so I will not elaborate, but by having different endings, and even bonus storyline events and even levels, I'm hoping that each player will find a way to proceed through the game and find their match.

On a sidenote, the idea of choosing your 'final boss' is core to the game's storyline and philosophy. It is in fact, pretty much the first thing that was thought of 7 years ago and is a result of my seminar back in university for which I had an amazing grade.

[quote name='taneugene' timestamp='1312557414' post='4845045']
Here is two questions for you: (1) What is an RPG? and (2) Why does strategic gameplay have to breakdown in the end-game when it was doing fine in the early-game? (In other words, why must the character become so damn godly in the endgame?)

1. RPG is too broad to properly define it. Here it means console style RPGs where you have some predefined story and are almost on rails fighting baddies along the way with more or less options to grow your characters.

2. I never said strategic gameplay has to breakdown in the end-game, I said many games breakdown in the end-game because of poor design decisions. In the case of Lost Odyssey, it was because in the early game, your characters had few skill slots and the available skills were rather weak(50% damage reduction from an element). In the end-game, you had over 20 slots and had access to skills that would completely nullify an element or heal you instead of damage you. I remember having so many skill slots that I would fill them with whatever was left. Providing no choice to the player makes for a boring game.

Also another point to note, of all the RPGs I've played, the early-game can be quite challenging especially if its your first playthrough and you refuse to read the FAQs. I remember quitting a few games because I can't get past the early level bosses, only to come back to it later and completing it a few times. Because I've refused to read FAQs (if I can help it) for the games that I quit, I rely on the old method of brute-forcing my way through the game by grinding power early on. When doing that, I've stayed ahead of the encounter in terms of power level, to a point where I could farm those encounters. From that point on I never died from any normal encounters (normal as in the encounters within the main storyline funnel).

It must be because I've been playing these games for the better part of the last 2 decades, but I don't find them to be all that hard early game. They usually make the early game easy so you can progress rapidly and get hooked on the story. If you have to read FAQs, then the designed failed in my opinion. Proper pacing is very important to maintain an acceptable challenge throughout the game. A game without challenge will not be remembered down the road.
[/quote]

Have to agree with Tiblanc on this one. No challenge = no fun.
Plus, it all comes down to the game's audience, and I should've stated that my audience is "guy that used to play rpgs in the 90s and wants to get back to it but can't quite cope with how childish they look in retrospective'.
As a result, a cosmetic modification was planned (visual will be closer to Castlevania: Symphony of the night than regular japanese-themed rpg (do not read jrpgs!) and the story is more mature (do not read Porn)).

[quote name='taneugene' timestamp='1312557414' post='4845045']
Here is two questions for you: (1) What is an RPG? and (2) Why does strategic gameplay have to breakdown in the end-game when it was doing fine in the early-game? (In other words, why must the character become so damn godly in the endgame?)

1. RPG is too broad to properly define it. Here it means console style RPGs where you have some predefined story and are almost on rails fighting baddies along the way with more or less options to grow your characters.

2. I never said strategic gameplay has to breakdown in the end-game, I said many games breakdown in the end-game because of poor design decisions. In the case of Lost Odyssey, it was because in the early game, your characters had few skill slots and the available skills were rather weak(50% damage reduction from an element). In the end-game, you had over 20 slots and had access to skills that would completely nullify an element or heal you instead of damage you. I remember having so many skill slots that I would fill them with whatever was left. Providing no choice to the player makes for a boring game.
[/quote]

Precisely my point! Most (I think it safe to say all in my case) turn-based RPG slowly but surely goes down the exact same path which transform your characters into gods. This tendency changes the game from a strategic-based battles during the early-game (when your power level is low) into something of a slug fest in the end-game (when your power level is absurd).

For a strategic game to maintain its strategic-battle components, they limit the amount of power a character can obtain throughout the game. Take Starcraft II for example. In the single-player campaign, you are allowed to buy extra upgrades outside of battles to make your units stronger. In the multiplayer game, such upgrades are non-existent and a number of "Campaign-Only" Units are also removed from your arsenal. Sure, players can still upgrade their units in multiplayer games, but each and every upgrade you invest in costs minerals, gas and time. A wrong move in your action-queue at the wrong time can and will cripple you severely. This is strategy in its truest form. You maintain balance throughout the game with consistent pros and cons for each and every action. This also means that players will encounter the same pool of units over and over and over and over and over in all the multiplayer games. The only variable is which one the opponent deploys, and which one you should deploy to counter it. The surprise element in SC II is limited to when and how units are deployed. (I would go so far as to say its a glorified Rock-Paper-Scissors game with some pretty graphics. Heck, they specifically teach how to play this glorified RPS in their single-player mode where you must match up enemy units with your own counter-units to win an encounter).

Conversely, RPGs are designed to give players more power as they progress through the game. By the end of the game, players have everything that makes their characters "Epic Heroes" to match the "saving the world" theme in virtually every RPG. By giving players more power, it allows the developers to create more entertaining "Epic Battles" where the odds are seemingly against the players. These "Epic Battles" are entertaining insomuch as players are fighting against a somewhat overwhelming odds, and beating such odds is very satisfying. Similarly, Boss-Fights are like checkpoints to determine the character's power levels and to make sure that they have sufficient power for the upcoming battles beyond the current Boss-Fight. If the characters are underpowered, Boss-fights are designed to slaughter them and force the characters to gain enough power before they try again. The way power is handed to players in the game goes against strategic-battles. The more power you have, the less strategic your battles become. If your "Attack" command and your "Firaga" spell both deal 9,999 damage (or, god forbid, 99,999 damage), the only decision you need to make at that point in time is how flashy do you want your 9,999 damage to be. (Or how fast you want to end the battle, more like).

Ultimately this goes back to my original question: How do you reconciliate RPG and strategy? I've yet to play a game where my characters do not become god in the endgame. If an answer is found to this question, and the answer doesn't kill the fun in an RPG, you are on your way to make the next big hit.

[quote name='taneugene' timestamp='1312557414' post='4845045']
Also another point to note, of all the RPGs I've played, the early-game can be quite challenging especially if its your first playthrough and you refuse to read the FAQs. I remember quitting a few games because I can't get past the early level bosses, only to come back to it later and completing it a few times. Because I've refused to read FAQs (if I can help it) for the games that I quit, I rely on the old method of brute-forcing my way through the game by grinding power early on. When doing that, I've stayed ahead of the encounter in terms of power level, to a point where I could farm those encounters. From that point on I never died from any normal encounters (normal as in the encounters within the main storyline funnel).

It must be because I've been playing these games for the better part of the last 2 decades, but I don't find them to be all that hard early game. They usually make the early game easy so you can progress rapidly and get hooked on the story. If you have to read FAQs, then the designed failed in my opinion. Proper pacing is very important to maintain an acceptable challenge throughout the game. A game without challenge will not be remembered down the road.
[/quote]

Indeed. But how do you determine what is an "acceptable challenge"? Some players might not enjoy the gameplay but is invested enough in the story to do the bare minimum just to get to the next cutscene. Some likes to gain god-level-powers and (might) ignore the main storyline for most of their gameplay time. You can design your encounters to encourage the "cutscene chasing" player to invest abit more in the gameplay by making them step up to the challenge, but is there a way to make it continuously challenging for the "power chaser" who deviates from the main storyline time and again to get the next level of power?
Yes, you can implement level-scaling difficulty to make sure the encounters do not become too easy, but level-scaling can only do so much, especially when equipment becomes involved. In fact, I daresay most of the gamebreakers are equipment.

Disagreeing on the FAQ part (although my point of view largely comes from an MMO viewpoint, so application may vary). FAQs help you avoid lousy investments in terms of skill points and stats. Its becoming of a habit of mine to actually look at a FAQ before deciding what class I want to play and how I want to play it in an MMO. The amount of skill-variety in MMOs is staggering to the point that you must specialize to be effective when you reach max level. Add to the fact that a number of them have a vague description of what the "Stats" and "Skills" do, you are pretty much forced to look it up before investing anything lest you find out the hard way that your character cannot do some content because you "have the wrong build". (Actually, now that I think of it, that is the other extreme of a strategic RPG. You are always forced to do the "correct" thing or no one will invite you for the fun stuff. Whenever you do something "wrong", your punishment is you don't get to see the shiny new boss at the endgame, thus your investment is all for naught. *cough*WoW*cough*). How does that apply to single-player RPGs? At this point, I have no idea since I've refused to look at FAQs for single-player RPGs before I finish them. And even then, I only look it up to find the hidden content.

Which reminds me: FAQs are good for finding out the hidden content that you missed in single-player RPG. I don't think thats a design problem seeing as how it is "hidden" in the first place. You either luck out and discover it accidentally, or you go look up a FAQ. (To name one RPG: Kingdom Hearts I have 2-3 "hidden" bosses that you might miss if you don't know what you are looking for. Also the 101 Dalmatians, and all the Trinity Marks).

Edit: @Orymus You posted [s]a[/s] two wall of texts when I was replying. I'll go through that wall later.

Ultimately this goes back to my original question: How do you reconciliate RPG and strategy? I've yet to play a game where my characters do not become god in the endgame. If an answer is found to this question, and the answer doesn't kill the fun in an RPG, you are on your way to make the next big hit.
[/quote]

As long as monsters scale in power with the player, I feel strategy remains. What the player earns is not 'relative' power in any way, but options. At least, that is how I envision my project.
This is much akin to how Magic The Gathering, a popular Trading Card Game, has found a way to survive for so long where many TCGs have failed.
Their rarity system represents not power level but complexity and thus, options to change the rules. Changing the rules doesn't always mean it is to your advantage, but this is often sought after because the rest of your cards can support this strategy. Similarly, a strong skill may not deal damage, but changes rules in a way where your other minor skills can support this and become threats, or if chosen incorrectly, work very badly.