Issues using Cooldowns to balance skill power

Wavelength · 2019-03-13T21:10:58+0900

I've come upon a really interesting design issue while creating a magic-centric battle system that doesn't require the player to spend any resources (such as MP) to use skills. The design so far has used Cooldowns as a way to gate the frequent use of powerful skills, rather than MP costs. The more powerful the skill, the longer its Cooldown (the number of turns before you can use that skill again). This approach offers a lot of benefits - for example, it allows the player to use skills without worrying about saving resources for later battles, and the use of Cooldowns (even short Cooldowns for weaker skills) also prevents spamming the same action over and over, which would be boring. This seems to work well for extended Boss battles which generally take 10-20 turns to complete, but normal Encounters need to be much quicker to avoid the feeling they are "dragging on" - I've often heard 3 turns as a good length for challenging normal Encounters. Longer Cooldowns become kind of irrelevant when the battle lasts just 3 turns - a 6-turn Cooldown might as well be a 3-turn Cooldown (and therefore doesn't serve to balance out its higher power). For skills used near the end of the battle, the Cooldown becomes completely irrelevant. I've thought about having Cooldowns persist between battles, but that might serve to encourage the player to draw out battles that are already decided by spending turns doing nothing before finishing off the final enemy. Can you think of any way to design Cooldowns as a balance against skill power that still serves its purpose in shorter battles? And do you feel that Cooldowns can be used as a "cost" for skill use in the complete absence of MP and other resources, or is the entire concept broken?

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Started by Wavelength Mar 13, 2019, 12:10 PM 45 posts Page 3 of 3 View original ↗

CraneSoft

#41 Jul 20, 2020, 07:13 AM Source

Personally I've never seen a turn-based game in where managing skill cooldowns is significant outside of Granblue Fantasy (which is a puzzle-esque boss game), - it almost always result in (pointless) skill rotation or use offensive skill with longest cooldown first followed by others, and there is almost no way to make them matter in any short fights because any sane player can and WILL use the strongest skill right off the bat, unless you add initial cooldown ("Usable after X turns") requirement to them, which only serves to make those skills completely useless in short fights unless it's a boss (where cooldowns might actually matter) or you deliberately drag out fights and then use them as a finishing move of sorts.

If you don't want players to use that one OP move alone to win the whole day, the best approach is just to limit their number of uses, Pokemon-style or make them consume some other very limited resource.
Icenick

#42 Jul 20, 2020, 12:22 PM Source

TheoAllen said:
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.

While I completely agree, just trying to think outside the box. I personally wouldnt do this, I use MP as a limiting factor with CD, I dont reset or gain MP by traditional means, you are clearly presented with the start of a quest and your MP will only recover upon completion of quest or failure and retry.

It really comes down to how the creator wants battles to play out.

If your refreshing CD each battle, then the players will use the most powerful attacks and CD mean nothing and have to ask yourself why do I even have battles if they will last 1-2 turns and players using the same skill each encounter.

A thing to point out, the level can matter but it was more to give a rating to troops. An epic wizard doesnt struggle with a sewer rat, while a dragon is a most worthy foe.
So I disagree I think it can be implemented quite easily from early on with a visual state buff can call it courage or wtv, that reduces CD each turn. The more stacks the greater reduction and its easy to do with a stack counter, player sees his stack is at 3, knows all skills are 3 CD less.
Ignoring party level and just grouping enemies by tier;
very weak +5 CD
weak + 3 CD
average +1 CD
strong 0 CD
I would just never punish players with longer CD, its more to crush weak enemies by using wtv skills you want with little consequences.
bmg

#43 Jul 20, 2020, 01:11 PM Source

In our game Journey On, we also use a cooldown system with puzzle based mechanics in boss battles.

Since skills are designed to counter enemy mechanics in our game, none of them are strong damage dealing skills like limit breaks in FF7.

For example, certain skill removes guard stance, some applies DoT, there is a skill that stuns the enemy and prevents them from casting or raging...etc. The strongest offensive skill in the entire game is only 25% stronger than normal attack. Using all the skills in the beginning of a fight is pretty pointless if enemies don't use moves that requires it.

If you have super strong offensive skills like limit breaks in FF7, it may be a good idea to use TP system instead. Super strong offensive skills like limit breaks are meant to be emotionally satisfying to use. It feels nice to accumulate TP or fill up a charge bar, then unleash a super attack when it's finally ready. Skills like limit breaks are fundamentally different from crowd control types of skills like stun, thus they benefit from different types of systems.
duty

#44 Jul 20, 2020, 04:19 PM Source

Does your game have a good balance between skills that hit all enemies for moderate damage, and skills that hit a single enemy for greater damage?

To get to your 2-3 turn per small battle goal, give the smaller enemies just enough health to survive the maximum number of "hit all" skills the party could use in a single turn, and have the enemy troop outnumber the party by 1 or 2 mobs.
The second and possibly third turns of battle are then about dealing the last few HPs of damage with basic attacks, or single target skills that have yet to be put on cooldown. No cooldown waiting necessary.

If skill management is a part of your game, this can actually be a puzzle for the player to solve.

Hit all skills are optimal for encounters with multiple small enemies, but not for encounters against a single powerful foe.

The challenge becomes structuring the party so that you have enough "hit all" skills to mow through mobs of weaker enemies and enough "high focused damage" skills to mow down bosses - without having to wait several turns for one of those options to come off of cooldown.

Ideally, the player wants to time usage of skills, so that at least one optimal option is always coming off cooldown.
HumanNinjaToo

#45 Jul 20, 2020, 05:48 PM Source

I guess I've thought about cooldowns for skills in a turn-based battle system a bit differently than some others. I would only put a cooldown on skills that could be used instantly.

So lets say the PC has a skill that buffs their ATK and DEF for 3 turns. I would hate to make using this skill take up a turn because it doesn't do any damage to an enemy or provide any healing to the PC, so I would make it instant but balance the power of that by giving it a 5 turn cooldown so that it couldn't be spammed over and over again.

I prefer to keep battles moving, so I don't like that skills that don't move the battle along (in terms of moving the numbers around) take up turns. I'd rather make them instant but balance with a cooldown. This way a player can buff themselves, take advantage of that first turn of the buff by being able to attack right after, and just not be able to spam the buff to often.