Games with mechanics you love, and want to see continue

[XSTALKERX]

In most RPGs they just lower the damage that the spell does but that takes away the "impact" of those spells. think back to skyrim when you used the flame spell on an enemy it did absolutely nothing to him. Your enemy would be on fire but and lose health, but he wouldn't react to it at all which is just so stupid. You then don't feel as a powerful arcane mage, your spells lacked that impact. And I can completely see why because if it did magic would be the most OP thing in the history of any game ever.

To be fair, in most high magic settings like Skyrim, people throwing fireballs at you is pretty much an everyday occurrence. Hell, in TeS, anyone can be a mage with just a bit of training and most races get magical powers and spells as a racial trait. At that point a measly fireball flying at them is pretty much just Wednesday for most people of "dangerous professions", like bandits or adventurers and such.

As for balancing magic not to be overpowered, well, who says magic shouldn't be overpowered? Magic, by definition, is bending the rules of the universe to your will. I always found the idea of somehow scaling someone with the ability to spray flames from his hands to a guy with a sword to be ridiculous.

The best I can think of in terms of "balance" would be to make magic Difficult but Awesome (courtesy of the TvTropes terms). In short, pretty much what old-school D&D did: Your warrior might be able to whip your mage's ass ten times out of ten on lower levels, but on level 20 the warrior becomes a joke compared to the mage. In other words, make the mage really hard to play early on. Little health, no defense, weak and/or situational spells and possibly having to do a lot of tedious and/or demeaning work for advancement... and then you finally get your first flamethrower spell, and all your hard work pays off in troves!

Also, the other possibility, something that most games don't really explore that much (outside of sandbox games like Prototype of Infamous): have your mage be an one man army from the very beginning, and weave that fact into the actual story. Have people be afraid of him, make people give him quests that would be suicide for anyone else, have lords and kings treat him with awe and fear and allow him to use his reputation of power as part of his dealings with the world. In other words, make him a big-time power player instead of the errand-boy that most games treat the protagonists as.

Well then I think it's more subjective then because I never really liked that idea of anyone becoming a mage or that magic is well received and most people use it. I like the idea of a world where magic is almost banned and so very few people are able to use it and many will hate you if they find out you can. Personally I would really like it if you can't start out to be a mage and you're forced to take other skills but later on in the main story or even a very intricate side quest you get the opportunity to not really become a mage but get the ability to use magic. But then when people see you use it many will react hostile towards you and you might be banned from certain places.

But that's just how I personally feel about magic

Dead on with Skyrim, impact is a key thing! And dead on regards the combination of melee moves too. Fighting a skilled fighter should feel that way, and defeating them would be very rewarding if done the way you suggest.

Precisely. Just like I said in one of my earlier posts. A combat system the looks and flows like Batman and Assassin's Creed, but plays like Dark Souls where you're responsible for every action.

 

[lord.jeff]

I rather enjoyed a lot of the elements of Mana Khemia such as, locking of higher levels tell you got related in game items which met you knew if you were strong enough to fight the current boss and not have to go grinding, and the ability to change out characters during and attack or defense it added an extra layer to the combat and allowed you to keep your healer alive longer. It's a shame the story was so generic and boring.

 

[gabeg1]

xstalkerx Have you ever played Devil May Cry? That games fighting mechanics match your description pretty well I think.

 

[SadisticFire]

This isn't really an official 'mechanic' but I love~ abslutely love love love automation in games with crafting survival. It's why I can play 'good' survival games like 7 days to die, Rust, The Forest, because modded minecraft just has a lot more content. Between Industrial Craft, Thaumcraft, Applied Energestics, ect ect I can just do a lot more. Bonus, I'm now managing a server and a modpack, so it feels super fulfilling. Wait, what was this thread about?

Oh right, mechanics I want more often. Automation for crafting/harvesting/farming systems if you put them in there.

 

[COMaestro]

Exactly!! In most RPG if you level up, all it really means is just you be able to do higher damage and use better weapons and items. I would love to see a RPG that gives you more moves and abilities, but when I say abilities I mean actual sword maneuvers that you can use in combat.

For example let's say you can dodge and attack, like any action RPG, but let's say you level up your blade skill, or agility or whatever. It will grant you a move where you can attack while dodging. So let's say an enemy attacks you with a thrust attack so you then dodge to the side(the dodge is a sidestep) but while the dodge animation plays you press attack and your character immediately attack in the dodge animation and that will serve as a counter attack and will do critical damage. If you didn't have this skills what would have happened is your character dodge but only after the animation Finnish would you be able to attack, and if your sword hits the enemy it will do just normal damage.

In addition to this the enemy might be very good at blocking so if you dodge and attack after the dodge animation the enemy will then automatically block your attack. So essentially to take this enemy down you have to use this "Dodge counter attack" to get through his defense.

It would certainly add a nice layer of depth to the games! They would have to keep it simple to start with to draw people in whilst they got used to the systems, but your dead right in that there's some real scope for this kind of depth in RPGs now. So long as they implement it right and don't over-do it then it shouldn't be a problem.

No reason why magic can't be the same either. It'd be nice to have to "weave" around the joy-pad a bit as you would if you were actually conjuring a spell. Doesn't have to be over-complicated, just designed to give you more of a feel for magic - eg. an "impact" spell like fireball would require say 3 buttons pressing together, whereas a heal spell would require a smooth gentle stroke on the d-stick. Nothing to complex so that you get bored like, just something slightly deeper, similar to Okami's brushstrokes.

For magic the higher your level, the more time you get and easier the conjuring becomes, and thus you get the feel of really mastering spells as opposed to the mathematical approach of "you're this level so thus allowed this spell"

Sounds somewhat similar to the game Sorcery, which used the PS Move controller. Your basic attack was a flick of the controller, which sent out a small mana bolt, though if you swung from the side, you could curve the shot to try to get enemies that were hiding behind cover. As you learned new spells, you had to do different things with the controller in order to cast them. I believe you had to swirl the controller in a circle for others, like the tornado spell. It did a pretty decent job of making you feel like you were actually doing magic, though your wrist gets really tired after just a level or so because of all the wand flicking.

 

[MerlinCross]

RPG mechanic I'd like to see back - Earthbound's instant win.

See if you were strong enough, you'd touch the enemy sprite and the game would go "Wow, why do this fight? You go first and can one shot, move on" and give you the EXP gold and items(if dropped). More RPGs should have that.

 

[Ihateregistering1]

In Crysis (the original, not sure if the other games had this) I actually liked the fact that you didn't magically pick up ammo just by walking over it, you had to actually pick up the weapon from the fallen bad guy. To me it added a sense of immersion and that you were on your own and needed to scrounge for bullets and weapons, and it was helped because you'd actually see your guy reach out and pick up the weapon (as opposed to it just magically disappearing and re-appearing in your inventory).

I also liked that in Far Cry 3 you actually searched the bad guys you killed for equipment. It reminded me of "Die Hard", whenever John McLane killed one of the terrorists and would loot them for any supplies he could get. It furthered that sense of "one guy against an Army who needs everything he can get his hands on".

Also in Crysis, I loved how you could find weapons with different attachments (scopes, silencers, grenade launchers, etc.) and then attach them to your weapon. Lots of fun.

 

[kilenem]

X-men Legends/Marvel ultimate Alliance. It has 4 person Co-op local and online, skill trees and a loot system sort of. The best example since Marvel Ultimate Alliance 2 that sort of did this was marvel super hero squad online. It just didn't have a skill tree. Marvel heroes is close but it kind of breaks the 4th wall when their are four Storms running around. In marvel super hero squad online, only 4 heroes could go in a mission and none of them could be the same.

 

[Danbo Jambo]

Sounds somewhat similar to the game Sorcery, which used the PS Move controller. Your basic attack was a flick of the controller, which sent out a small mana bolt, though if you swung from the side, you could curve the shot to try to get enemies that were hiding behind cover. As you learned new spells, you had to do different things with the controller in order to cast them. I believe you had to swirl the controller in a circle for others, like the tornado spell. It did a pretty decent job of making you feel like you were actually doing magic, though your wrist gets really tired after just a level or so because of all the wand flicking.

I wasn't aware of that game but, having just read the review, it's encouraging to see such an approach attempted. It also depends how motion sensor games go, but it would be nice to see a bit of this incorporated in games. It doesn't have to be loads - hence why I mention Okami as the brush strokes only account for a percentage of combat. But with a bit of playtesting and patience I think it would be a nice way to see combat progress.