Issues using Cooldowns to balance skill power

^ That's why I support the "warm up" (cooldown that starts at the beginning of combat in addition to after each use) mentioned by myself and others. If Nuke starts with a 5 round cooldown at the beginning of every fight, it removes the temptation to "wait out" cooldowns entirely and you (the dev) can balance around that.

As for players being expected to start a boss fight at full hp/mp, well yeah that's why my save points also fully restore the party, and that's why I place them before major battles. Generally, you want to minimize the dull, maintenancey BS required by the player in order to move through your game.

The "warm up", however, does prevent players from using big skills on baseline enemies if they want to, which can remove quite a bit of agency from the player as well as strategy involved, just to make balancing for the dev easier.

If a player has access to their most powerful skills from turn one, but has the option to use them whenever they want... and combat is designed around this, you can create over a dozen reasons for the player to not drop their best skills immediately. Whereas, if you have to "warm up" that big skill by sitting around for 6 turns, then you can bet that as soon as it's available, the player will drop it.

"Warm Up", changes the skill into something the player will desire using as often as possible, because the "warming up" indicates to the player that it is always more powerful, always more useful, and is likely something akin to a "Limit Break". It will be used the turn it is available, all the time, as a result. Regardless of what the boss does. Because it takes so long to get it off the ground. Because the player won't have any experience in using it all that much, since they won't ever get to use it in baseline combat at all. It's only use will be in boss combat, and thus, it will be spammed the first turn it's available. Every time. Players will not hold onto it and wait for an opportune time to use it. Why? Because, the sooner they use it, the sooner it recharges to be used again. You will have to balance around this behavior. It will make combat incredibly predictable, sure... but likely also a little dull.

However, if the skill is available from the start, and the dev has been teaching the player that most bosses will heal up the first turn, or will make themselves harder to nuke in the first one or two turns... players will look for opportune times to use it. The "outside timer" simply prevents players from using it on every single random encounter possible. They can still use it on random encounters if they like, but they'll be waiting to recharge it, if they do. Thus, they could save it for particularly rough random encounters that don't come up very often... save it for the boss... use it on any of the opening turns of combat... It becomes a strategic option rather than "a nuke that must be fired".

But, that's just my perspective on it.

When a player "fills a meter", they generally want to use whatever it is that's filled immediately. Unless, that meter is only emptied as a result of their own actions. Then, whether or not that skill being available to them is entirely up to whether or not they used it, and not whether or not the game gave it to them.

When a meter is full until a player empties it, the player hesitates on when to empty it. When a meter is empty until the player fills it, the player empties it as quickly as possible in order to start refilling it again and not waste time that prevents multiple fillings of the same meter.

Are you sure? I'll use 2 examples of limit breaks from my own project. For a bit of mechanics background, the limit meter resets at the end of each battle so you won't really get much use from it against weak common enemies, but you'll likely use each one several times during boss battles. Two of them are:

Miracle: Deals heavy damage to the enemy party, heals party hp (100%), recovers party mp (50%), and fully revives dead members.
Apocalypse: Deals massive damage and reduces the targets' atk/def/mat/mdf for 5 turns by 50%

While you could always use those the instant they become available, that'd be foolish because there's many reasons to hold off on doing so. Miracle, for example, is better saved as an emergency recovery button and Apocalypse would be far more effective if used prior to a boss's biggest, nastiest attacks or when you have a bunch of other really strong attacks ready.

Quite sure, I've played enough RPG's with "Limit Breaks" and watched others play enough of them that when the meter is full... the ability gets used, unless that ability is completely useless in every situation except a specific one. Your skills below... don't fall into that category. In fact, they'd be in the category I mentioned.... too good to not use.


Sweet! A free heal in the middle of the dungeon! This sucker pops up, you can bet I'd be using it! Doesn't matter what the damage is, I'm getting a free HP restore and half of my MP fully restored! How do I extend a regular battle to get this to pop up rather than have to use my Consumables or MP to heal up in the middle of a dungeon?

Even more fun? It's so good, that it falls under "use it as soon as its available in a boss fight". If a Boss Battle takes 20 turns to complete, and this thing comes up every 6... If I don't use it on every 6th turn, that's HP and MP recovery that I'm missing out on. It's a full restore! I'd get 3 full HP restores and half of my MP filled up 3 times (150% MP refilling!).


Against an enemy that isn't a boss... it's still a nuke. Why wouldn't you use it? You don't get to hold it over at all, so not using it is more detrimental than "holding onto it". It pops, you use it. It's also too good in a boss fight to waste turns holding onto it. Same example as above, the quicker I empty that meter, the quicker it can fill again so that I can get another cast of it in the same battle. Is it better to get 2 casts of it in a single battle or 3? 1 or 4? Which is more advantageous.


It's actually foolish not to use them the moment they become available as they maximize your "up time" when you do it that way. It's always best to get a free full recovery when you can. It'll save you having to heal up later. It's always best to lower the boss's stats and deal a Nuke amount of damage to them as soon as possible in order to maximize how many turns they're affected by those debuffs.

See, you've designed them as "game changers", so that's how the players will use them. To gain an advantage and to hold that advantage. The sooner they pop up to be ready to use, they will be used. You should create both systems and run playtests. I don't mean "you sit behind someone and watch them play". I mean, you send them a copy, have them record footage of how they play, and see what they do when their meters full. I'd wager the vast majority of your players would pop these the moment they become available.

I've got "really great" Limit Breaks as well, but I handle them differently. While my TP doesn't carry over either (unless you have on equipment that preserves TP, some of it is easy to obtain), it's uses are varied to the point that not all of them are a "use immediately" type affair. I have a Limit Break that simply revives everyone on the battlefield and buffs their stats afterwards. It only works on downed allies. It doesn't work on those that are still up. It's a utility skill. I've got a character who has the vast majority (all but one) of his skills come from TP usage. The first of these he can get is just called "Battle Cry", which simply buffs the entire party for 25% Attack Damage. It lasts 3 turns. If that were the only skill available, the player might pop it as often as possible, but it isn't. It is competing with the other 4 TP skills that require more of your TP gauge to be filled in order to use. There's a skill that simply makes the user immune to the "death" state at the cost of their own HP. There's another that does more damage with the less HP the user currently has and can hit multiple enemies. There's one that helps charge your TP faster, but the cost is you lose control of that character in battle for a while (it's a Berserk skill). The final one causes multiple hits and enables a percentage chance of counter-attacks. The one that makes you immune to the "Death" state for a few turns costs the full bar of TP. I've got a Limit Break for another character which is simply an elemental hit. It's an element that character doesn't normally have access to, but it only requires half of the bar of Limit Break to work. If the enemy is immune to the element it is... or immune to the weapon element required to use it... it's worthless other than the chance to inflict a rare state, which might not always happen. Another character has his Limit Break only be effective if his own Defense is higher than the enemy's attack. The higher the difference, the more damage it does. It hits multiple enemies. The last I have that is "utility" in such a way is simply called "Necrotic Potential", which takes the Current MP of the enemy, subtracts their Magic Defense, it hits a multiplier, and does damage. So, the more MP they've got, the more damage it will do. Which means, the longer the battle has gone on, the less damage it will be doing. But, it is highly effective against magic users with large MP pools.

The rest of my Limit Breaks are like yours. Massive damage dealers that are "too good to not use".

With the limited playtesting I've done using my friends and family, those skills are always used the moment they pop up. They're too useful not to. Especially in combat with a boss as they shave off the amount of turns needed to defeat that boss. Many of those skills even have uses against regular battles as they hit multiple targets and can end combat in a single turn instead of the 2-4 it normally takes. The skill pops and is able to be used, my friends and family have pretty much universally decided that using it immediately rather than saving it, is better. Especially if they can't hold onto it for the next battle (early game, my TP Preserving items are limited, so the character who uses TP to cast skills almost universally gets the first one, and other party members tend to get them according to usage of those characters). The other skills, however? With limited usefulness? Which only work in certain situations? They usually get held onto. At least, provided the player can do so. If the player has no way to hold onto that filled meter once combat ends, they use the skill immediately.

But, I've also designed my boss encounters around players walking in with 4 of them ready to go on the first turn. Because, it is possible that they will do so. I didn't add more HP to the boss. I added more gimmicks. Ways for them to erase or counter what the player did. I have a "Revenge" mechanic in play that if they're hit with certain elements, they "counter attack" with their own Nuke against you. Or, their own skill that cripples your party. I have bosses that are immune to certain states and some that can heal other states. I have bosses that have healers with them, or enemies that can make the boss immune until they are dealt with (so a first turn spam of all the Limit Breaks will kill those providing the invincibility to the boss, but not hurt the boss at all).

There are over a dozen ways to counter the "Limit Break" spam. But, you're going to need to do it far more frequently if your "Limit Breaks" are from a meter the player fills, rather than a meter the player empties. You also need to do it far more frequently if your "Limit Breaks" are nukes instead of Ultimate Utility skills. General all-purpose nukes trump just about anything else the player can do at any given time.

Why? Because they end combat faster. Ending combat faster is the most efficient way to play an RPG. It limits drain on resources through recovering HP and MP, maximizes the amount of XP and Gold you can obtain in a short amount of time, and lets you quickly blow through dungeons and get to the next bit of story as soon as possible.

The discussion's gotten around to the other issue with cooldown-based skills- namely, if you have a really strong skill, you're probably going to use it immediately when the cooldown wears off.

The problem is, in effect, that casting Ultima doesn't impact your ability to cast Cure or Fire. I see two general solutions:

1. Make casting Ultima impact your other skills. Make it delay their other cooldowns. Make it stun or silence them for a little while. Give it a casting time where it could be interrupted, or just where the user can't do anything else until it goes off.
2. Don't have Ultima. If there's no permanent cost, maybe Ultima is actually too strong for your game. Go with something less powerful, or add conditions and require setup before it hits nearly that hard.

It's a little easier to balance defensive options- you naturally have to time your use of them based on what the enemy does. No sense using 1-turn invulnerability against goblins hitting random people with rotten sticks, especially if it that puts it on cooldown when the ogre is about to crush someone under a tree.

I suppose you could defend X number of rounds until the meter fills up...

...or you could just finish the battle and get a full HP/MP restore for everyone, so there's that I guess. Yeah, I'm not a fan of excessive menu management (heal hp/mp and remove poisons after every battle), resource starvation (black mage, save your mp for the boss!) or any of that crap, so I just full refill everything after the battle.

You're assuming:

1. There aren't other ways to restore MP when there are. Everyone has passive +5% MP recovery baseline, some gear increases that, certain abilities recover MP in other ways, and ethers/elixirs are pretty cheap and offer an instant pick-me-up during battles.
   
2. Using the full hp restore every time it's available is worth losing out on the full revive. Okay so you use it the moment's available because you just gotta get that meter filling again, then you push the boss below 50% hp and it uses a bunch of nasty threshold attacks that you didn't prepare for. 2 members die and the survivors are critical. You gave your healer the Ribbon, so he's not paralyzed but the other member is. Damn, pity you didn't save it for a time when you actually needed it, because you're facing a potential party wipe.
3. The damage portion is a bit less powerful than standard attack skill used by one of the damage-oriented characters. It's a bonus more than anything else.

I'm a big fan of abilities that seem overpowered, but actually aren't. In the context of my game and how I've balanced things so far, it really isn't.

That said, we've gone a bit off topic, so to get back on track, yeah. They're limit breaks. They're supposed to be feel powerful, and that power is gated behind a fairly slow limit meter buildup instead of a cooldown, and since that meter resets at the end of battle, these strong abilities are really only going to see use against bosses or the occasional boss-in-mook-clothing foes.

If you choose to blow them the moment they're available, instead of when it's strategically best to use them (boss defense fully debuffed, character fully buffed) then you're using them around a mere 50% of their potential. ie, you'd be playing badly.

Except I didn't have that information when we started. It's difficult to have a debate on the subject when the goalposts are moved.

That being said... I have to wonder about the utility of such a healing skill if you get a full recovery after every battle anyway. I suspect its only use would still be in boss fights and still be use the minute it's ready to go. Reasons for that follow:

Without this information, all I have to go on is "what pretty much every RPG does and what mechanics are typically employed". There are other ways to restore MP in a basic system as well. Full restore items, MP consumables, MP draining skills, passive MP bonuses... Etcetera. However, these are kind of... negated by a skill that is guaranteed to restore 50% of your MP on each use. It means that it's most effective to blow all your most powerful MP attacks on the boss, all the most expensive ones, then drop the healing skill to get all your MP back quickly and easily.


How useful is the full party revive? Do bosses often Full Party Wipe in your game? Is being KO'd that common? I mean, it's common in my game as it relies heavily on players being prepared with the right equipment to not die quickly. But, I also don't have any sort of "Skill Based Healing". It's all done with Consumables. So, having a Limit Break that restores allies back to life (it's full party) at half their HP is beyond useful in erasing mistakes. But, it can only be used on dead party members, so there's no chance of players wasting it on a situation that doesn't require it.

Furthermore, your scenario assumes your Dedicated Healer with the Revive Limit Break survives the enemy Nuke. Or, doesn't get paralyzed. If they do, it's not like you can use the skill anyway. It's gone at that point. Still up the creek without a paddle. Especially since the Dedicated Healer is often one of the squishiest classes in the game. If they're not squishy and they can survive those blows, then it's not a problem for them to spend a couple turns reviving everyone by hand using Consumables. Especially since Consumables are insanely cheap in most RPG's and about the most common thing you'll find in Treasure Chests (roughly 78% of all Treasure Chests in a game contain either Currency or Consumables).

You also assume the player will know where the "thresholds" for the boss's nuke are. You'd have to make them consistent across every boss battle for the player to know they're coming up. You'd also have to have an HP meter for the boss or some kind of indicator of their total health to know when it's approaching. Otherwise... there's no strategy. You could be holding onto that full heal for quite some time. Or, you could be in dire need of it before it's ever charged.

You've got a lot of variables here and moving targets that look a lot like, "the stars need to align in just the right way to make this skill used as intended and get maximum usage out of it". Which, honestly, just means it'll be used for the most common useful aspect it has... restoring HP and MP and who cares about the revives? I'm not skipping on healing just because I could revive someone from the dead. Especially if full HP bars prevent the Nuke from killing me. Just no. Not happening. It's silly to think a player would such a powerful tool in reserve just for a minor bonus that rarely ever comes up in an RPG, especially boss fights.

Likewise, there's also the possibility of a player simply grinding out a few extra levels to steamroll your bosses anyway (I tend to do this in every RPG I play just to make combat faster, as it's typically very boring and monotonous... plus leveling is usually insanely easy and can be done while I'm doing something else). If your player's party is too high in stats/levels, the Boss Nuke may not even do much do them, so the heal is still far more useful than the revive.


I'm confused at this point. You labeled both skills as dealing "Heavy Damage" and "Massive Damage". This would imply that it's more than standard attacks and standard skills would do. You should remember that players don't individualize damage for a specific character. If your best damage dealer does 300 damage and your wizards only do 75 damage... it's a huge disparity... but, it is not "massive damage" if that 75 damage is buffed to 250 damage. It might be "massive" for that character, but it is not considered "massive" to a player in the least. Not when a basic attack can do 300 damage.

Either way, a skill that both heals the entire party and deals damage is more useful than holding onto it and doing either damage or healing. Combining the two is the most efficient and effective action.

And a skill that debuffs the enemy, even if you don't have massive skills ready to take advantage of it? It's still more valuable than not having it active and debuffing the boss. Is 5 turns without the debuffs better just so you can save up the other skills to use them all at once? Or, is 5 turns with the debuffs on, maximizing every single attack, better? Probably depends on how long you have to "hold it" for. The longer you hold it, the less effective a single damage spike would be. The more often it's in effect, the more damage you'll do overall, with the possibility of ending combat even sooner if you didn't hold it for a massive damage spike.

Personally, I just enjoy really overpowered abilities that come with a sort of "drawback". Something that requires the player to perform some "set up" before it can be used. Or to have a plan in order to use it. "Battle Cry" is a good example. It only raises Attack by 25%. It's useful only for the "Tank" classes. One third of my characters use Agility as their attacking stat instead of Attack. Another third use Magic instead of Attack. Oh, they can still use the "Attack" command and use the "Attack" stat, but their stats in this field are much lower, so it's not very useful for them. My Invincibility is the same way, it can save you in a pinch and give you some breathing room to heal up the party... or it can be used in conjunction with another skill that does a lot of damage, the less HP you actually have.

Even my "Nukes" have drawbacks. The "Magic Nuke" is virtually useless against enemies with high Magic Defense or high elemental resistances.

These are all very powerful skills, but it takes player skill to optimize their usage and chain things together to work well.


Except, that's sort of the problem. The player only gets to use/experiment with them in Boss Combat. What works against one boss may not work against the next. Using the skill to heal 100% of HP every time it comes up may be far more valuable in one combat, but less valuable in another. There is simply no way for the player to know when each situation is... unless the Boss is guaranteed to kill them at least twice so that they can learn and adapt strategies.

Players often steamroll bosses. It's rare that a boss in an RPG will Full Party Wipe a player. Very rare. Even more rare that they put the player on "the back foot" and force them to spend several turns managing their characters before even being able to do damage again. It's this way because such a balance is nearly impossible for a dev to implement with any kind of certainty.

This is one of the reasons why expending a Limit Break as soon as it charges up in a "cooldown" system is more beneficial than "holding onto it for the right strategic moment". What if that moment never comes? What if you didn't need the boost to win? If you did need the boost to win, players might often see this as "unfair" in that they couldn't charge it fast enough to do the thing where they can win the fight. A meter that charges a powerful skill will have players use that skill as soon as it becomes available... because it is too useful in a general sense to not use at every opportunity. The more often your HP is at 100%, the less likely that party member is to die from a single hit.

If the player can't carry the meter over and must wait in combat for it to charge, they will use it once it's charged, unless it's absolutely useless in the situation they are in. If the player's meter fills up over the course of many battles, the skills will be saved for strategic opportunities more often than not (unless they're very useful in a general sense... in which case, they're usually saved for a boss, and all of them are blown in the opening turns in an effort to kill the boss as quickly as possible).

I had two reasons for proposing an "out of combat cooldown recharge".
1. It prevents the player from spamming all their uber moves every single combat in order to steamroll basic encounters.
2. It still allows players to obtain and use their uber moves on basic encounters in order to get a feel for them, how they work, and possible strategies to set up with them.

While it is a system that can be abused (what system in an RPG can't be abused, after all?), the drawbacks to the abuse far outstrip the benefits in my opinion.

In general, I just think it's better game design to let the player decide when to empty a meter rather than letting the game dev decide when that meter is full. It speaks more often than not to player agency. But, that's my opinion on it.

No goal posts were eever moved because you assumed their positioning in a topic unrelated to them in the first place. Don't worry about my game balance. Let me worry about my game balance. I assure you, everything you've thought of is something I've also thought of and have taken into consideration. It'll all work out.

Since it's not at all relevant to this topic, let's drop it and move on.

Players deciding when to empty a gauge isn't mutually exclusive with developers deciding on the criteria in which a gauge fills. You can have both, and as I've already stated examples from my own project on why you wouldn't want to use the full party 100% hp/50% mp/revive limit break just because it becomes available, I'm not sure what else to say. If you think your timer-based system is good, you should use it. Because it can be gamed (yes, I would afk before a boss to get all my good stuff ready) I personally couldn't recommend it to someone else. Everyone's opinions are different though, so people should just use what they like. There is no right or wrong on this, just varying degrees of better or worse.

I simply think the timer based system has more benefits than drawbacks. Players going AFK just before a boss fight is something easily minimized if a dev really wants to do that.

1. You don't advertise the boss fight is right there. The moment the player steps into the room, boss fight, no chance to wait around (a lot of RPG's already do this). Don't put a save point right before the boss either. If you don't advertise the fight is coming, the player will need to manage their resources better.
2. Give the boss gimmicks that counter the party entering with full Limit Breaks or make them less useful when used on the first turn.
3. Just accept that players are likely to do this and that it is an acceptable strategy. It might not be a huge deal if they use these skills depending on how your combat is designed and the goal of it. If the only way to beat a boss is to use the strategies taught to you by the enemies in the dungeon up to it, the Limit Breaks might not be the best solution in the first place. Or, certain Limit Breaks might be much better than others for this purpose. Likewise, if the players are overpowered at that point, it's probably better to just let them get the battle over with rather than bog them down with combat out of an inflated sense of ego as a dev ("how dare they steamroll the boss I worked so hard to create! They're playing my game wrong!").

As for the options being mutually exclusive... It sort of depends. Players are more likely to hold onto a Limit Break if it only has a few uses. They're also more likely to hold onto it, if you allow them to. If they can't "take it with them", then they spend it in order to maximize "up time". Unless it's difficult to spend it. Players are simply far more likely to expend a resource given to them infrequently and that they can't keep. Especially if it comes down to "I can use this twice in battle... or three times in battle..." Using it more is always going to be more beneficial, unless the skill has very few uses (like say, if you couldn't use the full HP restore on anyone except the dead. It wouldn't be spammed then, and it'd be saved and used for its intended purpose).

If I were to create a cooldown system, I probably would use what I'd suggested. The problem is that I simply don't enjoy cooldown systems. For me, I feel like they take too much of my Agency away as a player as well as require me to be able to predict the future. I fall into the trap of "But, I might need it later", which is never a good thing for your player to have. The act of saving everything they can save, because an emergency might come up... and that emergency never comes... because games aren't designed around you having to use any particular skill to win combat. Especially a Limit Break. As a dev, I don't want to use them simply because they make trying to balance combat a nightmare. I have to assume players will enter combat with any number of skills on cooldown, or maybe not on cooldown, then I have to balance what order they might use those skills in and try to invent counter-play for that.

That being said, the obvious problems with Cooldown systems are fairly easy to fix and work around. After all, you can play MMO's that have solved most of those problems already. One need look no further than that for most of them.

The interlocking systems in the game that have nothing to do with the Cooldowns can often solve the issues with them as well. It just depends on a lot of factors like enemy balance, equipment balance, other systems in play... etcetera.

I just throw out solutions to the problems presented. If I have very little information, then the solution isn't going to be for your particular game. It'll be for the "generic RPG most everyone designs". Because, that's all I've got to work with. Every solution I propose usually has about a dozen more interlocking systems and design components to make it viable, though I often expect people to work out their own way of balancing the concept if they like it. I think far enough ahead that it'd be "If I wanted to do this, how would I do it? How would I tackle each design issue with this?". But, I don't often give that information, because people didn't ask for it.

In this case, without having much more information than what the OP presented, I think my solution would work fairly well without a lot of extraneous extra design aspects. It could be "plug and play" with what information we have.

Most definitely don't do either of these. As a player, having to slog through a large part of the dungeon again because the surprise boss fight killed the player isn't fun at all. Once I realize the game is full of surprise, no-warning bosses, I'm probably going to be saving every couple steps (if the game allows saving anywhere) to get around this, so in a sense, it creates another issue that adds bumps to what should be smooth, fluid gameplay.

Generally, using cheap tricks to act as counters to poor design decisions is a terrible practice.

You seem to be suggesting that some weird "player vs developer" power struggle exists when most (successful) developers only want to create something that's fun for the player. If my boss can be steamrolled by something I didn't plan for, I won't be annoyed because "OMG MUH EGO! THE PLAYER BEAT ME!" but rather, because I'd feel like I failed to provide the player with an engaging encounter.

If the players can just afk to get their cooldowns ready, why shouldn't I just give them a save/restore point that instantly resets those cooldowns for them? Or, if my intent wasn't for the strongest stuff to be available on turn one on any fight, and yet, players found a way to get around that by afking, maybe I should consider a better system instead of giving my bosses cheap nonsense like multi-round immunity buffs, instakill counters if those abilities are used on turn 1-3, etc.

As someone who also loves to play these kinds of games, I'd have no problem with limit break meters resetting after every fight or strong abilities with warm-ups. I would have a HUGE problem with bosses using any of the gimmicks outlined above (boss-out-of-nowhere, round one limit break use deterrents, etc)

I'm of the believe that you should be able to save anywhere. I tend to refuse to play anything except an Oldschool RPG that does not adopt this. I'm an adult, I have things to do. I need to be able to save anywhere and anytime I like. Things happen. I can't be bothered to try to find a save point when I need to quit.

From that perspective, the design decisions make a lot more sense. If you can save anywhere, you're only sent back as far as your last save. Which, maybe, was the last room or two.

Likewise, in most RPG's... it's rare for any boss to pose a significant threat or cause a Full Party Wipe. It's rare you need more than 3 turns of healing in most boss fights. It's rare you even run out of MP. So, it's fairly unlikely that you'll die anyway and be sent back through the whole dungeon. It's a non-issue in most cases.

Unless we're talking about a Dark Souls like game. Which, is a whole different beast. Unless your game is designed like Dark Souls... these are non-issues entirely. Personally, I haven't died to a boss in an RPG since Final Fantasy X and fighting Sin. I only died there because I didn't know how to kill him before he used his Overdrive. I got stuck in the game right there, quit, never came back. Every RPG I've played since then... Yeah, no deaths. Most RPG's are ridiculously easy. Too many safety nets.

That being said... A lot of early RPG's didn't advertise a boss fight at all. I played a lot of them where there were no save points before a boss. You were expected to traverse about a quarter of the dungeon again if you died at the boss. But, you rarely died at these bosses either, though it did make them a challenge when you didn't have an obvious sign that you should be healed up. It might seem "unfair", but in reality it is teaching the player to have everything they need before they move forward, lest they walk into the boss room without being ready. Basically, you're teaching the player to manage their resources and punishing them for not doing it. I think of it as a good design decision.

But, I probably think that way because I find too many RPG's to have sub-par combat systems without any strategy... and boss fights to be boring nonsense with baseline gimmicks that don't keep me on my toes. That's not to say that I'm some master at games (I couldn't even beat the first boss of Dark Souls after all), but I'm looking for less of a "challenge" and more of a "nail biter". I want to win, but by the skin of my teeth. Because that's exciting. It's engaging.

I have no problem with players saving every few steps, though I doubt many will do that. Simply because it eats up too much time and it's not really worth doing. They might save once a room or something. Which, to be honest, it's a good idea. But, even in a game like Skyrim, where saving is available pretty much anywhere... and boss rooms are obvious... players don't often save before them at all. They march right in, and do the fight. If they lose, they're upset they lost progress. But, if they win, they usually save afterwards... or are forced to save with the auto-save feature.


I'm not sure what you consider a "cheap trick". Or why you would consider a counter to player behavior as "poor design". If the player can knock off half the health of the boss by spamming all their Limit Breaks on turn one... you're going to counter them as a dev anyway. You do it with your system, by not allowing players to hold over their Limit Breaks between combat. Others do it by inflating the stats of the boss.

It just so happens that I'd rather use enemy behavior than "dev powers" to tackle the same problem. I think it's better to create interesting combat as a result of countering instead of waggling my finger at the player and saying "no". Does every boss need a counter to Limit Break spam? No. Would they all have it? Probably not. Would some boss fights be interesting if the Limit Break spam had a counter? Yes. The "trump card" the player is using is suddenly wasted and they have to go, "okay, now what?" if they don't reset outright (and some might... players can be sore losers sometimes...) just to get their Limit Breaks back. It creates an interesting situation in combat when you use the Limit Break and it does... something negligible, because you didn't read the combat situation correctly. Creates a "nail biter" moment sometimes.

Besides, isn't the boss dropping a nuke on you at a "threshold", as per your own design choice... a "cheap trick"? What is its purpose except to pour on a ton of damage that the boss might not otherwise be able to pull off, just to attempt to create "strategy" or "challenge" when the rest of combat doesn't do that until the threshold?

You see the issue here? What is a "cheap trick"? Personally, I don't consider bosses dropping nukes at thresholds to be "cheap" in any way. But, a player might see it that way. Who gets to be the judge and jury on "what is cheap"? Whomever happens to be complaining about it?


I'm not suggesting anything. This is how most devs treat their boss encounters. If the player can kill it before it does much of anything, "I need to buff it, I need to make it harder, I need to find a way to punish the player to keep them from getting overpowered and killing my bosses like that". It's pretty common even here on the forums.

You have to realize... sometimes the player doesn't care about an "engaging encounter". If I've spent a lot of time with your combat system and it's ceased showing me anything new or interesting... I'm bored of it. I'd rather power level and steamroll your bosses as quickly as possible. I don't care what their gimmicks are at that point, as they just make the combat frustrating while you hold me up from the rest of your game. People spend so much time "making bosses engaging" and yet rarely, if ever, make combat as a whole, for 10 hours or more, engaging. If I'm bored of your combat, I don't want to do it anymore. No, I don't care if your bosses are "interesting" or "unique" as once they're gone, I'm back to the slog of "boring combat".

Most of the time, I'd rather steamroll a boss unless it's going to make me consider options I hadn't before in combat... or unless it's a "test" after all the "lessons" the regular encounters taught me. Because, frankly... if I'm bored, I'd rather move along to the next bit of story.

Haven't you noticed that in playtests? Not just of your own game, but other people's games? Or through your own actions/reactions when you play RPGs? If the entirety of combat is boring, and only the boss fights are the highlights... Why would anyone want to engage them for extended periods of time anyway?

But, this is rather off-topic. The point is, a lot of devs see players steamrolling a boss as a "me vs them" scenario. Personally, I do not. If a player spent time gaining extra levels, extra stats, or obtaining really great gear for the soul purpose of steamrolling my bosses... Eh, why not let them? It's their way of having fun with my game. Or, getting to the bits they find fun. I only care about balancing around players who grind only a few levels and are just playing the game without the intent of gaining a massive advantage. Those that look for that massive advantage, are doing so for a reason. Especially if they have to go out of their way to get it. I think it's the epitome of bruised ego for any dev to try to deny this behavior from their players just for the sake of "balance" or "providing a challenge". If the player wants a challenge, they won't grind for extra levels. They won't do a ton of sidequesting. They won't try to obtain all the best gear at every stop. They'll play the game as normal, hitting only the encounters they would hit if they weren't grinding, just getting from A to B, and fight the boss at roughly the expected level.

I think a dev only has to worry about "balance" and "challenge" for players who are just playing the game normally. Players just trying to get from A to B and complete the game. If those players are steamrolling your bosses... then you need to rework the boss fights in order to bring them "up to snuff".


Depends on what sort of game you're trying to make. Most of the easiest games I've ever played do a lot of full HP/MP restores before boss rooms and such (or at every save point... Lord, oh Lord, is Pokémon so easy because of Pokecenters and their only 200 tile spacing between each other).

I do not ascribe to the notion that a deliberate design choice to make gaining such an advantage difficult should be replaced with "easy mode" just to prevent players from using it. Namely, if they want to sit around and wait 5 minutes before getting their Cooldowns back, eh... let them. They're only hurting themselves. They're halting their own progress in a game for an advantage. An advantage that is minimal if you simply expect players to try it. Personally, I'd have bosses be fairly mixed so that none of them are advertised to the player, but some can be steamrolled via this method... some are immune or resistant to this method... and some are weak to the method, provided you can wait a turn or two. A mixture of rewarding the behavior as well as punishing it. I'd personally use it to make combat more interesting and less of a predictable slog. But, that's just me. I like bucking convention and removing safety nets.

You're free to design the games you want, but I personally do not ascribe to what you would consider "good design" in this instance. Probably due to personal bias in not wanting to create an easy game with barely any real challenge. I prefer games that keep me from watching Netflix at the same time I'm playing them. Games that keep me engaged 100% of the time. If I want to "disengage", I'll play Minecraft or Civ or something.

I also don't ascribe to the belief that "good design" means the player is having fun 100% of the time. They need down time. They need to lose every so often. They need to be punished when they make bad decisions. These things make the rest of the game sweeter in my opinion. Victory feels far better when a boss stomps a mud hole in your rear 2 or 3 times before you win. It feels sweeter if you just barely pull off a victory in that first encounter. I ascribe to "challenge" meaning that you need to learn things, apply those things, and iterate on those things with gradually more complicated set ups so the player doesn't get complacent.

But, that's just me.


Depends. If you've got the multi-round immunity buffs and "insta-kill counters" (which I don't have and never said should be implemented), then obviously the intent is not "you shouldn't be able to afk to get your Limit Breaks". Maybe, the intent is, "it's a good and viable strategy, but not on everything. Sometimes, you'll be punished for using that strategy. Sometimes, the dev counted on what you were doing and decided to make combat more interesting by preventing you from doing it this time."

It largely depends on the rest of your combat system, however, and what you're teaching your players. If you don't want them to exploit a weakness in your game and do something unintended... you simply remove the feature causing the issue or design the game in such a way that the exploit doesn't exist or has very minimal use.

If you communicate to the player that you want them to experiment and use any advantage they can find... and then sometimes punish them for an advantage they thought they had... you're communicating to them that things don't always work. They have to have more than one plan. They have to be ready for their first plan to fail spectacularly sometimes. You're teaching them that sometimes they make a poor decision and might suffer a setback as a result... or... a loss if it's really bad. You're also teaching them something about your boss and combat system at the same time.

That is... if you want a combat system like that. A game like that.


I'm sorry you would have a problem with that. I wouldn't have a problem with limit break meters resetting after every fight either. I'd just find ways to exploit the combat in order to use them as often as possible. I played one game where it was difficult to get the Limit Break by normal means, but I decided I could make mince-meat of bosses by just "turtling up" in combat and pretty much exclusively using Limit Breaks. This was Final Fantasy X, by the way. Potions are ridiculously cheap and easy to obtain... most of the Limit Breaks are incredibly powerful, even against bosses... Use consumables and Dedicated Healer to stay in the fight, set everyone to defend every turn... once Limit Breaks were active, drop them on the Boss, drain about half their health... do it again... kill them with the next round. Doing this minimized the amount of healing I actually needed to do (since Defending gives a defense buff that's pretty valuable... it's a strategy that even works in a lot of RPG Maker games as devs don't consider players doing this... which is kind of funny... not designing around simple exploits of their systems) and maximized the amount of damage I did. Why take normal amounts of damage and deal baseline sets of damage when I could defend and then drop my "Nukes" in the form of Limit Breaks... which were equal in power to about 10 rounds of combat on their own (that is, a round is 1 full turn of the party... all four party members getting one action... now, I can pour on 40 rounds of damage in a single instant using this method. Why WOULDN'T I do this?).

Personally, I don't have a problem with a boss enemy having a counter to a strategy I came up with. It engages me in combat to know I can't "afk" through the combat by using tried and true methods all the time. By adopting a single strategy (the one every RPG player adopts... you've got a Tank, a DPS, and a Healer... and another party member of choice, who probably doesn't matter... usually another DPS if it does matter... heal when damaged, tank massive damage, pour on DPS until dead... sometimes pop consumables to restore MP or restore the dead... sometimes realize the boss has a gimmick like a charge attack or a threshold nuke... or even some turns where it counters you if you hit him, so you don't hit him for those turns) to win every fight. I have to be thinking on my feet. I like that. Engages my brain. Something the boss does is unfair to me, I know to not do that again. Bosses not advertised, I know to be healed up as much as possible and carry everything I need at all times, rather than rely on save points to heal me up and make the boss that much easier.

But, I play D&D. Players don't get a "full heal" before boss fights. They don't know where the boss is most of the time. They have to fight the boss often after a gauntlet of weaker enemies. They have to be prepared at all times. In a game where if they die, their character is usually gone forever and they have to start over. Part of the "challenge" is in the player managing their resources responsibly and not coming unprepared.

I just choose to punish the unprepared while you choose to give them a safety net. Different design philosophies.

Though, I have no idea why you consider my design philosophy to be "bad game design", just because you disagree with it.

@Tai_MT no offense, but I'm not really going to reply to all that because this whole thing is going way off topic and I have no interest in being party to the derailment of this thread. I would if this was a broader topic, but it's not. That said, I think we've both said our parts regarding how to balance cooldowns, and anyone else reading this thread can form their own conclusions about which method is best.

Thank you guys so much for all of your ideas and feedback! I've read this topic at least ten times since I posted it last month, and not only have you guys come up with a lot of smart suggestions that I would have never connected to Cooldowns, you've also brought up superb points about solutions that I had thought of, giving me entirely new ways to look at those solutions. I've been developing and changing the Cooldowns system - as well as the larger game structure and how it ties into combat - and reading your discussion here has been massively helpful. THANK YOU!! :D

I didn't want to interrupt the flow of ideas that was coming, so now that the first wave of discussion has run its course, I feel comfortable adding some clarifications and opinions of my own.

One thing that I want to address first: a lot of you guys made the (reasonable) assumption that the design issue I'm dealing with is the possibility of players using "nukes" (gigantic AoE damage spells and the like) to clear encounters too quickly. The actual issue is related, but different: If encounters are only lasting a few turns (whether nukes are available or not), there's no practical difference between a 3-turn cooldown and a 10-turn cooldown.

I want to allow the 10-turn cooldown skill to be more powerful than the 3-turn cooldown skill, but in doing so it would just eclipse the 3-turn CD skill for everything except boss fights. I'm fine with the Turn One Nuke existing (and in fact I think it can be a lot of fun), but I want to make sure there's a reason for the player to use the 3-turn cooldown skill sometimes too. (MP costs usually cover that, but I don't have that luxury in a cooldowns-only system.)


On the solution of Waves / Chained Encounters
I really like this idea as a general approach to making longer Cooldowns relevant in normal encounters. A skill with a long cooldown will likely still be unavailable when you take down the first wave of enemies, making the Cooldown feel like a real drawback for the second wave - not only does this feel both fair and intuitive, but it also means that the player will naturally delve into different strategies for each wave. And being able to completely clear the cooldown at the end of combat in this system is nice too.

The only real issue is the minor abuse case of players stalling near the end of a wave to clear their cooldowns before the next wave hits (this might even be framed as a strategic consideration, although not a particularly fun one). I can definitely think of games I've done this in - to build up resources and prepare for the next wave - and it does remove some of the fun and intensity.

Bravely Second's mechanic of rewarding you for one-turn wipes on enemies sounds like a good (albeit very specific) way to reduce reliance on that kind of stalling; offering some sort of bonuses or incentives for clearing battles quickly is probably a good idea in general if the design would otherwise promote intentionally stalling in a decided battle.

I'll definitely be looking into ways to implement this kind of "Waves" structure into parts of my game where Cooldowns felt irrelevant.

On the Solution of Persistent Cooldowns (that last after combat ends)
Something that I really like about this solution is how, in addition to making a long cooldown (almost) equally relevant no matter when it's used during combat, it also tweaks the starting conditions each time you enter battle (you'll have a different set of skills available at first), meaning that even against the exact same troop the combat might transpire in a different way than the last one. Makes it harder to fall into stale, predictable patterns.

The main drawback, as a few of you guys have noted, is that it encourages the "stall" tactic near the end of battle (more problematic than with Waves, since it's often easy to replenish resources like Health once you make it out of combat). So it seems like this approach works best when you (as the designer) have a way to encourage the player to quickly finish a decided battle.

What I realized after reading your posts (especially @Soryuju's ideas for speeding things up) and reflecting some more is that I do have ways to encourage the player not to stall! (For example, my game uses random dungeons which are timed, with time moving forward as ATBs fill up during battle - I know that sounds dicey but failing the timer doesn't causes a game over nor block progression in the story.) Since this mechanic already provides a good counterweight to the design drawbacks of Persistent Cooldowns, I've decided to go with this solution for now, and implemented it over the past couple weeks. It's looking good! B)

As a matter of good show to the player, I am going to clear all cooldowns before Boss Fights (and perhaps between each floor of the random dungeons as well). I would recommend that anyone using this solution do the same, unless they have mini-boss fights or something like that directly before the Boss.

On the Solution of Adjusting Encounter Length and Frequency
This is actually a solution I've tried in the past (in order to solve the problem of "meaningless encounters" - I guess it kills multiple birds with one stone), and it would completely solve the issue of 'long cooldowns not meaning anything in most encounters'.

I consider this to be a last resort, though. The two times I've tried designing games with both dungeoneering and relatively long standard-encounter length (above 2-4 turns on average), it felt like it completely broke the flow of running the dungeon. Not only did it feel like a slog to finish up each battle, but I would also lose track of where I was in the dungeon, where I wanted to run next, etc. It would no longer feel like one coherent experience, but rather like one experience being interrupted by a lot of other experiences.

(This isn't the case in a game like Final Fantasy Tactics, Disgaea, or Match Land, where there's no larger dungeon to connect each battle, and the player can devote 100% of their attention and short-term memory to the battle at hand.)

I'm not sure whether this flow issue was due to designing battles that merely "felt" too slow, or whether it was just something I felt personally that other people don't, or whether it's a legitimate design issue in long standard encounters. Would love to hear your thoughts on this!

On the solution of Warmups / Starting Battles with Skills on Full Cooldown
Several of you guys made this suggestion and while I genuinely appreciate the idea, I can't really see how it would help my own combat system (nor most other combat systems). If the problem is that there is an "overpowered", general-use skill that the player will always want to use early on, the warmup just pushes back what turn they're always going to want to use it, and before that point there will be some other skill with a shorter warmup that has the same issue. I feel like the first few turns of battle become even more predictable (and slower) than in a system without Warmups.

Worse yet, such an approach would either leave the player with a very small selection of skills to choose from on the first 1-2 turns of battle (probably ones that are either weak or very situational), or none at all. Since the entire point of removing MP costs is to encourage the player to constantly use skills, it's anathema to my design goals.

The one benefit I can see Warmups providing (besides locking out obviously-overpowered Turn 1 Skills) is that if the player is "equipping" skills from a large set, they will need to think carefully - not just equipping the biggest, strongest skills, but rather making sure they will have enough useful skills available early on for short battles.

I feel like I could certainly be missing something! Aside from the equip strategy above, does a Warmups mechanic provide design benefits that the other solutions discussed (such as Persistent Cooldowns) can't provide?

On the solutions of "Break" Systems, Conditional Skills, and Skills Requiring Setups
I think that having a "Break" system is a very cool mechanic for the issue of players just using all their "nukes" on early turns, and I think it would be even more elegant than having skills require certain setups or conditions because it would affect all skills in similar ways (and would still allow for diversity by making certain enemies easier or tougher to Break). It would probably even work for a game where skills were of different power levels, but identical cooldowns (e.g. every skill has a Cooldown of 5 turns). I do love the design behind it, though it's probably not a solution I will explore for this game since it seems to address battle flow moreso than the balance of long cooldowns.

I do indeed have a lot of skills that require setups to be done (or conditions to be true), but interestingly I had to make the Cooldowns on these skills even longer than usual in order to allow them to be appropriately powerful when you do set up the perfect condition. Having skills like these has added some diversity and improvisation to combat, which is nice.

On the solution of Global Cooldowns
Definitely sounds like a nifty malus to add to certain spells (especially ones intended as 'Finishers', e.g. a spell that does massive damage which scales with the foe's missing HP). Because I want to encourage players to be constantly using their skills, I can't foresee adding global cooldowns to this particular game.

A similar approach, however, could be to rework Global Cooldowns (that affect all of a caster's skills) into forcing the caster to skip one or more turns after using the skill. This gets rid of the "middleman" of having to choose a basic attack or guard for the turn where skills aren't available, and would allow me to load a lot of power into said skills. Worth considering.


To speak to a small selection of questions and tangents that I found particularly interesting:
I love that you asked this, because being able to answer "why does it exist in the first place" is at the heart of any good game design. :) Here are the main reasons I chose to design this game with lots of easily-beatable encounters (as opposed to something like a Boss Rush):

• First and foremost - an early version of this game that I released had much less frequent battles, and among the dozen or so people that gave me feedback, one of the most consistent things I heard was that combat was enjoyable, and the players wished there was more of it. I know that battle time gets in the way of enjoyment in many games, but here the goal is to include more of it.
• Power Fantasy and Enablement are themes in my game, and I feel that being able to stomp some monsters fits that feel better than having every battle be a struggle.
• Although these "mob" encounters are easily beaten, they still play a role in the dungeon's challenge. I have an "Exhaustion" system where after taking damage, a battler will, over time, lose Max HP equal to a portion of the damage taken. Finishing the battle stops the application of Exhaustion. Since healing skills can only heal you up to your Max HP, they can't erase everything that the enemies do to you (leaving the dungeon and resting will restore all of your lost Max HP, though).
  • I feel this has the potential to make even "trash mobs" strategic as you either try to avoid taking any damage, or try to finish them as quickly as possible to avoid the onset of Exhaustion.
  • I have Food items which can be eaten to relieve Exhaustion (restore lost Max HP) within dungeons. In a game where accumulating money is the main goal (think Recettear), I feel the existence of these mobs gives a real reason to invest money in items like Food.

Your so-called "Ramble" was actually one of the most cogent and brilliant explanations of the MP mechanic I've ever heard, followed by an equally cogent and helpful assessment of why the Cooldowns-only system has been such a design challenge!! I'm not the first one to say it but your post was awesome.



I love the way you explain how a resource like MP can allow large differences in power between boss battles (meant to provide acute challenge) and standard encounters (meant to be more of a test of efficiency). Essentially, I like having standard encounters be a test of efficiency in some way or another - but since creative use of Skills is the heart and soul of my battle system, it's imperative that the "efficiency" doesn't mean holding back from using a character's skill set.



That's where the Cooldowns-Only idea first came from, and I love the dynamic it created. Then, the harder part becomes how do I still capture the benefits that a skill resource like MP offers, without actually using MP (which would discourage frequent skill use).

I think most of the rest of your post was discussed above, but I want to say thanks one more time for offering such helpful thoughts!


I remember a lot of times during EBF3 (which regenerated HP and MP outside battle and had visible, non-moving encounters on the map) that if I weren't nearly topped off on HP or MP before I was about to take on an encounter, I'd just walk around the map until I was topped off. That wasn't fun (it felt abusive but also necessary), and it was one of the things that I feel the Epic Battle Fantasy series should probably rework.

Now in the case of my game - since most of my explorable areas have time limits, I don't need to worry about "abuse" per se, as stalling would become more of an actual risk-reward decision. As of now, I still don't tick down cooldowns outside of battle, and I'm torn about whether adding that feature will be good for the game design, but it's nice to have the option available as a design tool.


This is pretty similar to what I ended up doing! It ends up leading to a whole chain of design concerns, but if you can address them all, you end up with a really good system in the end.

I'm going to assume that while you're on the map, world time passes either faster than, or at the same speed as, real-world time. I'm also going to assume that cooldowns tend to be on the scale of minutes or hours, rather than seconds, based on the fact that you noted things like Sleeping will increase the recovery speed (as opposed to completely resetting the cooldowns). In that case, I believe that you'll find that one round of battle equaling 6 seconds will be far too short - the cooldowns will almost never come back up within the same battle.

I know that in real combat, everything takes place on the scale of seconds - but for gameplay reasons, it's okay to bullshit the physics a little. I'd recommend making each round of combat represent a much longer timeframe of in-world time: perhaps one or two minutes. Play with it and see what leads to the most satisfying gameplay.

I think the feature of double cooldown speed for inactive party members is very cool, by the way! It's a great way to encourage the player to keep mixing up their party as they traverse an area.


About the discussion in the last dozen or so messages:
@Tai_MT and @Aesica: That was quite a hearty discussion! I've got no problem with my topic breaking off on tangents (good GMD discussion is bound to do so), and I found myself agreeing with each of you at different times, but I'm going to try to discuss the heart of the issue rather than get to each detail.

I'm of the opinion that the best practice is to use mechanics to guide your player toward having fun. That doesn't mean that you have to force your player to do this or that, or protect them from all possible dangers in your game - but it does mean that if something unfun (such as walking around doing nothing) is objectively the best move to make and that's clear to a lot of your players, then you should rework the mechanic to encourage behaviors that players will find more fun.

Empirical evidence shows that most players will try to "do good" rather than "have fun" - check out a bunch of Let's Plays and you'll see it in action. Tai, I think you brought up MMOs as a counterexample, and mentioned D&D as an inspiration for the "real-time" cooldowns. But I think both have a few important distinctions from single-player RPGs that loom large in a mechanic like this:

• In Dungeons & Dragons and other pen-and-paper RPGs, the DM can (mostly) control the pace of adventure, and can straight-up prevent players from stalling outside combat to regenerate resources (for example, if the cooldown is 1x per session, the DM will probably say no to ending a session early just to regain the cooldown when you pick it up next session).
• MMOs have a slightly different dynamic where real time is an important resource to the player - people who play for power or achievement are looking to get stronger or achieve more than their peers around them. Standing around doing nothing, waiting for a cooldown to tick out, means that you're not getting anything done while your peers are - a disadvantageous move. In a single-player RPG, though, you have as much time as you want to get things done, so (for example) AFKing for a slight advantage is advantageous.
• RPGs tend to have an onerous penalty for failure - usually Game Over and do the entire segment (since you last saved) again, without much interesting happening as your recover your lost progress. MMOs tend to have some sort of resource loss but otherwise you can pick off where you left off. Failure in pen-and-paper RPGs (whether it means permadeath or not) can be a fun jumping-off point for storytelling - more of an opportunity than a real penalty.

One other issue when dealing with the matter of "well players can do this if they really want to but I wouldn't because it's boring" is the divide between both approaches when trying to balance your battles: if the battles need to be balanced (and exciting) for a full-resource party, given that a lot of players will AFK/stall to get this, then players who don't do the boring stall beforehand will be at a severe disadvantage, and if you're offering an exciting, fair, balanced fight to people who come in with, say, half resources (or whatever you calculated would be an average for players who don't AFK/stall), then players who stalled for the advantage will encounter a double-whammy of unfun when the boss fight ends up being trivial.

• A partial solution to this, however, is to simply restore the party's resources (and reduce cooldowns to 0) at the beginning of any boss battle. Unrealistic, sure, but I think it's still a slam-dunk game design decision if you're already offering a tedious way to do it (AFKing). P&P roleplaying even has a similar concept in the "Take 20" to speed up things that are tedious but reliable.

So I think this kind of real-time (or semi-real-time) cooldown system is a good feature in pen-and-paper RPGs, and it can work on long timeframes (like hours) in MMOs. For single-player RPGs, I feel it can only work in games that place a lot of importance on in-game time, and where it's game time (not real time) that controls the cooldown (e.g. skills usable once per in-game day). That's my take on it.

I really appreciate the original idea and the passionate arguments about its pros and cons, though! Any idea that gets that much discussion going is a post well spent.

map time is the actual time, where a day is about 20 minutes of real time.
in battle, time is tied to the turn in progress.

they're varied, but everything is tied to the turn scale, so regardless of seconds/minutes value, everything is based on turns; I based myself on the "steps to end turn" method, that regulates HP draining states on the map.
once the battle ends, the battle system counts the turns elapsed and adjusts the global clock accordingly.

@Wavelength

I'm glad you managed to find a solution that works for you game. I'm even glad I was able to help a little in that.

However... :D

Yes, MMO's and Tabletops are a lot different in terms of implementation of such systems. But, personally, I think the baseline concept of these "real time cooldowns" holds.

While death in an MMO is a negligible punishment, players aren't actually playing an MMO to "compete with other players". They push forward because doing nothing in an MMO is simply boring. Waiting around for a cooldown is boring. Especially with baseline enemies being able to be killed with the most basic of skills that refresh very quickly.

In an MMO, most players are "playing solo". You do have the other 30% or so who are playing with friends or out of obligations to their guilds or whatever... But, a lot of people "play solo". No competing with other players. No "race to the end". It's a simple, "doing the content is more fun than standing around and waiting to do the content".

I find that this holds true for standard RPG's as well. Nobody loads up a game to wait around. Why would they? People play a game to be active. It's why there are always arguments about "player agency". It's why Extra Credits frequently makes the (erroneous and often wrong) assertion that "the player should have agency at all times and as quickly as possible in a game so that they can have fun".

The reason a player may "wait around" is because the game dev has taught them that doing so is a good idea.
--Advertising the boss room ahead of time. Promotes waiting around to refill your stuff.
--Skills like instant healing in the middle of a dungeon are more cost effective than bringing consumables.
--Bosses are designed with a fully healed party in mind and thus drop a lot of nukes or have a ton of HP to make up for player nukes.
--Waiting around, itself, isn't a punishment for poor resource management.

I don't "wait around" in an RPG to heal up. I don't wait around in an MMO to recover my best cooldowns. I don't blow all my magic skills in a Tabletop RPG before hitting the boss room unless the counter I'm in is difficult and we'll die if I don't.

While I can't speak for other RPG Players, I can only speak to what I've seen players do... The vast majority of RPG players are of this same mindset most of the time. "Waiting around" is boring. It is something they don't want to do. It is something they won't ever do unless they're already bored. Nobody goes "AFK" in a singleplayer RPG unless you've designed the game in such a way that doing this is the desired behavior.

In fact, even with current "easy mode" RPG design where you get a full restore after every combat... or a full restore before every single boss... players won't "wait around". They push forward to the next restore point, since that's what you've taught them to do. You taught them that there's a save point here, the next room is the boss fight, heal up if it doesn't heal you. You taught them, "expend all your resources in battle, you'll get them back at the end of it anyway".

It is just a matter of teaching the player how such a system works. Cooldowns return faster in combat, or take several minutes outside of combat. Probably better to get into combat to restore them, right? Probably better to not waste the big stuff on easy to kill enemies if you can help it, right? Or at least... not once you've been in a dungeon for a while. The next room might be the boss room, maybe I should always keep my HP topped off, just in case?

A lot of it simply has to do with player conditioning. Players will do what your systems condition them to do. They won't wait around for 5 minutes for a cooldown to return if you make it the punishment that it is. If you mitigate (or make it unpredictable) bosses that are killed quickly by the "wait five minutes for my cooldown to return" behavior, players are more likely to see it as "a waste of time". They're more likely to expend these large skills in areas where a boss monster does not reside (early dungeons... out in the field... already cleared locations) and more likely to save it once they're over halfway through a dungeon "just in case the boss is coming up". Because, hey, the skill might work on the first or second turn and grant an easy win. But, it might not, too.

As for tabletop deaths... It might be a good story moment sometimes, but most deaths in tabletops aren't "story worthy". In any case, losing your character partway through a campaign or a story or before even hitting max level... hurts the player who lost their character. You've slaughtered their entire investment. It's rarely a "net win". Most DM's try to avoid killing their players as a result. It tends to bring the game to a screeching halt. Most DM's also explain to their players in "Session 0" what kind of DM they are and what kind of game they'll be playing. I explain frequently, "I'm on your side. I'm not trying to kill you. I'm here to watch you succeed. But, I have limits to my patience. If you are deliberately doing something really stupid, you will die. If you drink a potion and have no idea what it is, you might die. If you jump off a cliff and hope that a Natural 20 will save you, it will not. I may cheat in your favor or against you, depending on what makes better storytelling. If I'm rolling too many crits against you, I may fudge the dice to keep a string of bad luck from killing you. If you're rolling too many crits against me, I may fudge the HP of an enemy to make the fight more intense to prevent a string of good luck from steamrolling what is meant to be a significant story encounter. You will never know when I'm cheating in either direction. But, I'm here to help provide you a good time. You will die if you do stupid things. Or, if the combat just happens to kill you through no fault of anyone's."

I carry that philosophy into all of my game design. Except, with an RPG... a death does not result in the game grinding to a halt. It results in a little bit of "sore loser" mentality for all of 2 minutes from a player, and then another attempt. Too many deaths/losses results in rage quits. But, not enough deaths/losses results in a game that feels "too easy".

As such, the level of difficulty should be consistent across every aspect of the game.

That being said... Tabletops are more about resource management than anything else. Cooldowns are about the same thing. Same with MP. Resource management. Why wouldn't you punish players for not doing the basic thing your systems require they do? If they are given a resource, teach them how to manage it effectively. If they don't learn how to do it, punish them for not doing it. I don't understand why devs feel this urge to implement systems which require the players to learn and play specific ways... and then remove all punishments for not learning things and not playing in those specific ways. "Here's MP, you need to manage it... oh, but don't worry if you blow it all in this fight, you get it all back once battle ends!".

For me, that's why I'd prefer a secondary cooldown system outside of combat. If a player doesn't want to engage in combat to get it back, yeah, they can wait. Or, I dunno, if there's no encounter for a while (using on map encounters), the player may get some of their turns back just traversing from one room to the next.

Though, an interesting reward for "finishing combat quickly" might be that you give some of your cooldown turns back. Or, maybe every so many kills. I'd say every 2 kills, everyone gets 1 turn of cooldown back? Or if combat is finished in the first turn, you get 2 turns of cooldown back? Something like that might be far more interesting than a "wait around" mechanic, depending on implementation.

Just my thoughts.

Glad i read this lol. Got into a lengthy & heated argument with a play tester who stubbornly believes all cooldowns no matter the way the move works are inherently bad game design. (At this point I think he'd rather have the brainlessness of spamming all moves at all times at a higher cost.)
Mostly because I don't like the idea of using one move and one move alone to win the day.
Like out of the 36 moves the player can learn in my game. Only 12 of them have cooldowns. Two being heavy hitting damage skills and the rest being counterstances preventing the player from stacking the state or Power/Mind/ Critical Charges. On top of that Leveling the skill up is fairly quick and lowers the skill cooldown by 1. (max skill level is 5). It irks me because he thinks the player would be hindered and he whines about cooldowns even affecting the player. (I'd say deal with it but he's the one playtesting it.)

I had a thought reading this and thought of something, though I'm pretty surprised it wasn't touched on much. I'm referring to skillsets designed with modest cooldowns in mind, aka rotations. This is a common design mechanic that's commonly employed in MMO's. So you have you're basic cooldown-less spammable skills/attacks, and you also have a couple of other skills with small amounts of cooldown, just enough so they can't be spammed, so maybe 2~3 turns. Since we execute 1 skill/attack per action, no 2 skills will be on the same cooldown at any given time. If you have just a handful of these types of skills, and they are designed to interact and work with each other in various ways, you end up with what's called a "skill rotation". By the time you finish your rotation or are partway through it, the 1st cooldown skill you used should no longer be on cooldown, allowing you to rinse and repeat if necessary. Of course, you're not strictly limited to a single skill rotation pattern. A well-designed skillset would have multiple possible rotations that could possibly branch from various points in the chain.

Now I realize this is an old thread and @Wavelength's original question is most likely no longer an issue. But anyway, the way I would go about differentiating the medium CD skill vs the high CD skill would be to design the high CD skill to be used at the end of a rotation. Now, this doesn't mean the player is forced or limited to using this high CD skill at the end of the rotation, but rather it would simply synergize better if the player did so (i.e. greater effect/damage/end result). This would still allow for player agency, but also incentivize the use of certain skills at certain times. By the time the player reaches the end of the rotation the 2nd time around (after having used the high CD skill beforehand), the high CD skill will be ready for use again. Note: I think the upper limit for the "high" CD skill would be 5~6 turns. Beyond that would probably be too tedious a rotation to pull off/design, rendering this point moot.

(don't blame me, someone bumped this thread before I did lol)

That's not an issue in Game Mechanics Design, threads here don't have the necro rule because it is the sort of thread (like several other sections) which can usefully be left open.

This is, in essence, what I'm aiming for in my current project. The tricky bit (at least so far in my experience) is thinking about these shorter cooldowns across the whole party, not just those of a single actor.

I could suggest having monster or mob levels playing a role in cooldowns. Not exactly a level of enemies per say but let's call it a rate mob level. Let me explain.

Flavor wise it's nice imo to not have 20 different kinds of fireballs because your much more powerful and adept now. With experience you can conjure quicker and more deadly fireballs with ease!

Assiging mob levels that check your level could be a solution.
Party lv is 15 and your fighting slimes and bats who's at rated level of 5. Some bears and bandits might be 10, and a dragon is a 20!

How it works? The higher level you are compared to your opponents gives your party a buff that reduces cd.

Looking at a lvl15 party against weaker foes of 5 your party every turn gets a state that reduces the CD of all spells by 3. Turning your 3 cd skills into free casting spells each turn.

Again flavor wise a powerful wizard doesn't need to summon his most powerful fireball to kill a bat, he can quickly conjure a faction of it's power to deal with weaker enemies.

Basically weaker rated troops or mobs give a state that reduces all cd each turn, letting players use skills without care since they come back quicker.

While that can be the idea, I'm not sure if I would like that approach especially in the power fantasy kind of game in which the higher level you're, the stronger you're. That kind of approach seems like a backward, mechanic wise. And it is also inconsistent in which you might make your player confused as to why the cooldown is inconsistent.