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列举12种优化回合制RPG战斗系统的方法

发布时间:2013-04-15 10:30:29 Tags:,,,,,

作者:Craig Stern

首先要声明,我个人更喜欢在自己的RPG游戏中设置回合制战斗系统。在我目前已发布的6款游戏中,有5款采用了回合制战斗系统,我正在开始的两款游戏也选择了回合制策略战斗系统。这就是我的个人喜好。

但我并不认为只能以某种特定方式设置回合制RPG战斗系统。所以在此不会特举哪款游戏为例说明问题,因为我不想让你觉得所有RPG的战斗系统都应该向该游戏看齐。但我会在下文中探讨优秀的回合制策略战斗系统所拥有的共性,并列举成功运用这一元素的游戏。

tactics_ogre_let_us_cling_together(from nerdreactor.com)

tactics_ogre_let_us_cling_together(from nerdreactor.com)

优秀回合制战斗系统的4个优点

出色的策略回合制战斗系统一般都有如下4个优点:

(1)自发式的复杂性。它会通过一系列相对简单的规则中创造复杂玩法。

(2)清晰度。应用玩家清楚地传达不同战术决策的直接结果。

(3)确定性。系统应该充分保证高明地使用策略的玩家基本上能够一直取胜。

(4)策略工具。如果系统中存在一些随机性(这是多数情况),玩家拥有足够的策略工具,那么玩家多半要靠高超的技能而非单纯的运气取胜。

我们如何采用这些功能?

优秀的策略回合制战斗系统的4个优点彼此相关:有一系列简单的规则之中,回合制战斗系统可以用指数方式增加其策略可行空间,实现自发式复杂性以及基于技能的战斗结果。

如果你执行得当,自然就会产生清晰度:也就是说,如果你并没有用隐晦的规则令战斗系统超载以达到复杂性,玩家就会快速理解自己的动作将在战斗中发挥什么作用,这样他们就可以事先制定计划和战略(清晰度还取决于优秀的界面设计,以及合理的视觉线索,但这些东西是优秀游戏设计的基本要求,所以在此无需赘述)。

让我们具体一点。过去游戏开发者有多种技巧令基于回合制的战斗系统呈现策略发展潜力,我希望看到新RPG更出色地使用这些技巧。

也许最强大的技巧就是:

(1)使用空间。在战斗系统中添加一个空间维度,从而在令玩家易于理解的基础上,极大增加其复杂性。多数人都玩过Candyland或大富翁,更不用说西洋棋和象棋了。人人(甚至是你妈妈)都能理解在空间移棋子的概念。

在战斗中使用空间,可以象征性和真正地添加新维度:引进攻击范围的概念,让玩家直接控制逃离,以及保护弱者等操作。

当然,你并不一定需要一个基于网格,带有可移动角色的地图来创造优秀的策略战斗系统,但不得不说,这确实是一种使用简单规则引进复杂性的有效方法。单是这种设置就可以让你的游戏领先于多数日式RPG战斗系统。

但基于空间的战斗并不是一个巨大的成就:几乎每款西方RPG多少都有这种元素。我们应该再大胆一点,以下是常被日式RPG和西方RPG所忽略的11种实现这四大优势的技巧:

(2)给予玩家至少6种角色。这无疑是关键所在,但过去20年中多数西方RPG却忽视了这一点。想象一样只用4枚棋子下棋的游戏——-这种游戏极大降低了策略复杂性,趣味性也会大打折扣。

让玩家控制更多角色可以产生更多策略优势。更多角色意味着玩家需要处理更多战斗场景,并且必须兼顾更多角色的生死存亡。这就会让玩家陷入一种如何以最小损失维持最多对象的困境,这会让战斗更加有趣。

另外,玩家控制更多角色,每个角色就可以呈现更强的专业性。

(3)专门化的角色。如果只能玩骑士或主教,象棋游戏该有多无趣啊。要确保不同职业的角色在战场上发挥不同的作用,不要让它们都成为战斗,只是攻击点、盔甲和符咒有所不同而已。

如果你成功地令角色职业呈现差异化,玩家就会开始仔细考虑战斗中的角色用途。《Fire Emblem》就是这方面的成功典型。

(4)专门化的敌人。很显然,如果每个敌人都是拥有魔法攻击力的混战彪形大汉,你的玩家就没法按轻重缓急的优先顺序来应对敌人。要给敌人分配不同的技能、弱点和战斗角色。

(5)多变的距离。不要老着以混战距离扳倒敌人。可以适当间隔敌人,给予玩家更多尝试远程战略的灵活性,以及让玩家采取掩护躲避敌人或者侧面夹击敌人的远程单位。

(6)方向。让玩家在背部或侧面,更易攻击或受到额外损伤。这样做可以增加近距离定位的重要性,增加玩家的额外考虑要素。这还可以让快速行动的角色更具危险性,增加侧面攻击和钳形运动的有效性。

(7)多变的地形。使用得当,地形可以增加玩家关于角色位置、在战场创造自然堵塞点、提供掩护,甚至是为某角色提供加成或惩罚的考虑(游戏邦注:《Advance Wars》和《Disgaea》等游戏就是这方面的典型)。

(8)可操纵的地形。可以让玩家在战斗中操控地形。西方RPG中常以火墙、冰墙和陷阱等元素让玩家布置障碍或堵塞点。RPG中的可破坏地形还比较少见,但多数人为创造的地形只能保持较短的时间。

我们可以在此基础上更进一步。给予玩家改造战场的灵活性,创造新的攻击渠道,关闭原有的攻击路径。这可以让你的战斗系统更具创意策略思维。玩家不会局限于如何布署角色以便更好地利用环境,他们还会考虑如何改变环境本身,以便在第一时间创造更多作战优势。

(9)资源管理。这是几乎所有西方RPG都会出现的元素,多呈现预算黄金、保存魔法值、贮藏卷轴和药水等形式。但这种标准RPG的资源管理植入方式在战斗关卡并不是太重要——它实际上是向一个已知领域引进了一个更大的挑战。

为了让特定的战斗更有生气,可以使用一个要求玩家轮流平衡强大的攻击vs其他重要事项的顺序。Action Point系统就很可取(例如《X-Com:UFO Defense》以及《辐射》系列前两款游戏),它迫使玩家在决定角色动作时,同时权衡一系列因素。另一类可取的系统是让多数强大的能力消耗大量魔法值,但魔法值可随时间发展重复再生(例如:《Tactics Ogre:Let us Cling Together》)。

(10)给予单位多种攻击选项。这一点与资源管理巧妙吻合:给予角色更有效能但更昂贵或具有攻击风险的选项,可以极大扩展玩家的战略选择。这种进退两难的困境是策略战斗系统中的一种点缀。

(11)支持多种目标。这不但是指你的战斗系统应该以不同的输赢条件挑战玩家,还意味着游戏战斗系统应该允许不同的目标(并不只是输赢变化)共存。

这是对优秀RPG应该拥有多种结果这一理念的扩展:游戏中还应该含有战斗所引发的战后结果。如果玩家误伤了一个守城护卫,那么就要让玩家为此遭受袭击。如果玩家成功保护城中最富有之人的庄园,那就要让这个富有的NPC给予玩家奖励。

除了这种功能为创造沉浸感所带来的明显优势之外,它还为玩家创造了更丰富的策略体验。玩家的游戏目标就不再局限于获胜,而是在获胜的同时尽可能完成多个分支目标。

因为针对每场战役设置定制目标需要投入大量精力,你可能会为自己的战斗系统选择持续的分支目标,例如维持角色斗志,或者收集那些只会在战斗过程中出现的特定资源(游戏邦注:例如《Fire Emblem》中的藏宝箱)。

Telepath RPG(from atomicgamer)

Telepath RPG(from atomicgamer)

例如,在《Telepath RPG: Servants of God》中,要使用灵魂才能让被杀死的角色复活,而要获得灵魂则必须在战斗过程中向一个严重受伤的敌人使用角色的Soul Suck能力。玩家被迫周期性地使用拥有Soul Suck能力的角色,以便持续吸收灵魂。在特定战役中,玩家必须权衡利弊,判断究竟是要让敌人活得更长久一点,好持续从中收取灵魂,还是直接令其一命抵一命,救活自己被杀死的角色。

(12)允许玩家延迟攻击。延迟攻击为回合制模式添加了新元素,允许角色在还没有轮到自己的时候进攻。反攻是一种有效的延迟进攻形式(至少在日本策略RPG中是一种常见元素)。通过允许混战单位仅报复混战单位,远程单位也仅回应远程单位,让反攻进一步复杂化相互防守的单位匹配,强化角色专门化特点。

伺机攻击是另一种延迟攻击的形式,它鼓励玩家多留意自己的单位移动及部署情况,比较轮到自己的角色攻击时使尽浑身解数,以及保存一些体力以防患于未然这两种选择的优劣。简而言之,这是一种资源管理概念的延伸(例如:《X-Com》中的反应火系统,以及《Pool of Radiance》中的守卫控制)。

有趣的是,不少即将面世的独立游戏(如《Frozen Synapse》和《Fray》)的战斗系统实际上也使用了延迟攻击元素。这类游戏中的战况很大程度上取决于玩家猜测出哪些单位何时位于何地的能力。

以上就是我对RPG战斗系统的12个看法。我还没有听说过哪款RPG战斗系统同时运用到了以上所有技巧,实际上我个人也不希望如此,因为这样就会衍生出一个极为复杂的战斗系统。(本文为游戏邦/gamerboom.com编译,拒绝任何不保留版权的转载,如需转载请联系:游戏邦

12 ways to improve turn-based RPG combat systems

by Craig Stern

The following blog was, unless otherwise noted, independently written by a member of Gamasutra’s game development community. The thoughts and opinions expressed here are not necessarily those of Gamasutra or its parent company.

Want to write your own blog post on Gamasutra? It’s easy! Click here to get started. Your post could be featured on Gamasutra’s home page, right alongside our award-winning articles and news stories.

This piece was originally posted on SinisterDesign.com. It is reposted here with the author’s permission.

In my last opinion piece, I provoked a certain subsection of the world of RPG enthusiasts by slaughtering a particularly sacred cow: the D&D-style combat system. A surprising number of people wrote in agreeing with me. Predictably, however, others responded in one of two ways: (1) “So you think a real-time, action-centered combat system is better?” or (2) “Name an RPG combat system that’s better!”

The answer to (1) is easy. No, I don’t think real-time is better. Just the opposite: I prefer turn-based combat in my RPGs. Of the six games I’ve released since I started designing games, five use turn-based combat, and I’m working on two more with turn-based tactical combat for good measure. That should probably tell you something about my tastes.

The answer to (2) is more complicated. I don’t think that there is just one way to do a turn-based RPG combat system correctly. I’ll avoid naming particular games, since I don’t want to give the impression that all RPGs should employ combat in the style of any one particular game. I will, however, discuss the features that good turn-based tactical combat systems have in common, and cite games that successfully employ them.

The Four Virtues of a good tactical turn-based combat system

If you’ve read my last article, this list is going to look familiar. A good tactical turn-based combat system exemplifies the following Four Virtues:

(1) Emergent complexity. It creates complex gameplay out of a comparatively simple set of rules.

(2) Clarity. The immediate consequences of various tactical decisions are made clear to the player.

(3) Determinism. The system is sufficiently deterministic that skilled play using a proper strategy will nearly always result in victory.

(4) Tactical tools. If there is some randomness in the system (which there will be in most cases), the player has sufficient tactical tools at her disposal so that skilled play will almost always trump bad luck.

How can we employ these features?

The Four Virtues of a good tactical turn-based combat system are closely interconnected: with a handful of simple rules, a turn-based combat system can exponentially increase its tactical possibility space, thereby achieving the goals of both emergent complexity and skill-based outcomes to battles.

Clarity, in turn, arises organically if you do this properly: which is to say, if you don’t achieve complexity by overloading your combat system with arcane rules, the player should quickly be able to understand exactly how her actions will play out in combat, allowing her to plan ahead and strategize. (Clarity also depends upon good interface design and appropriate visual cues to the player, but those things are basic to good game design in general, and aren’t worth discussing here.)

So let’s get specific. There is a veritable cornucopia of techniques that game developers have used in the past to make their turn-based combat systems sparkle with tactical possibilities, and I want to see new RPGs start using them with greater regularity.

Perhaps the most powerful technique is simply to

(1) Use space. Adding a spatial dimension to combat increases its complexity exponentially without making it substantially harder for the player to understand. Most people have played  games like Candyland or Monopoly, to say nothing of Checkers and Chess. Everyone (even your mom) intuitively understands the concept of moving pieces between spaces.

By using space in your battles, you add a new dimension to combat both figuratively and literally: the concept of attack range comes into play, and the player gains direct control of actions like fleeing and protecting weaker characters behind stronger ones.

Of course, you aren’t required to have a grid-based (or hex-based) map with movable characters to create a good tactical combat system, but it’s an awfully effective way to introduce complexity using simple rules. This alone will put your game far ahead of most jRPG combat systems.

Then again, spatial combat is not exactly a huge achievement: virtually every western RPG has this in one form or another. Let’s be a little ambitious. Here are 11 other techniques for achieving the Four Virtues that have been consistently overlooked not just in jRPGs, but in western RPGs as well:

(2) Give the player at least six characters. This one is absolutely key, and yet most western RPGs of the past 20 years have missed it. Imagine playing chess with only four pieces–you’d be looking at a game with greatly reduced tactical complexity and far less interesting matches.

Putting more characters under the player’s control pays great dividends in terms of tactics. More characters means that the player can be expected to handle much more involved combat scenarios, and becomes responsible for keeping more characters alive. This naturally gives rise to dilemmas about how to balance multiple objectives with minimal losses, which in turn make combat more interesting.

Also, with more characters under the player’s control, each individual character can be much more specialized. Speaking of which…

(3) Specialize the characters. How dull would chess be if it were played entirely with knights, or bishops? Make sure characters of different classes serve different battlefield roles; don’t just make them all fighters with different hit points, armor and spells.

If you differentiate your classes successfully, your player will have to think carefully about which characters should perform which actions during battle. The Fire Emblem series, especially, does a great job with this.

(4) Specialize the enemies. This should be obvious: if every enemy is a melee bruiser with magical attacks, your player has no reason to prioritize one enemy over the others. Give enemies distinctly different capabilities, weaknesses, and battlefield roles.

(5) Variable distance. Do not always begin battles with enemies 1 turn or less away from melee range! Spacing them out a little will give the player more flexibility to try out ranged tactics, as well as pressuring the player take cover from or flank enemy ranged units.

(6) Directional facing. Make it so that characters are easier to hit and/or suffer additional damage when attacked from behind or the sides. Doing so amplifies the importance of positioning in close quarters, adding another wrinkle to the player’s considerations. It also has a side effect of making faster-moving characters more dangerous, as well as increasing the effectiveness of flanking and pincer movements.

(7) Variable terrain. Used properly, terrain can add new dimensions to player considerations about character positioning, creating natural choke points on the battlefield, providing cover, or even providing bonuses or penalties to the characters who stand on it (Advance Wars and the Disgaea games serve as excellent examples of the latter).

Terrain can also serve as a point of character specialization, with certain classes performing better on certain squares (or being uniquely able to move through them).

(8) Manipulable terrain. But why stop there? Let the player actually manipulate terrain during the battle. Temporary terrain creation occasionally appears in western RPGs in the form of walls of fire, walls of ice, and traps that players can place to form barriers or choke points. Destructible terrain in RPGs is rare, however, and most created terrain lasts for only a short duration.

We can do better than that. Give the player meaningful flexibility to shape the battlefield, creating new avenues of attack and closing off existing ones. This will cause your combat system to accommodate more creative tactical thinking. The player won’t just be thinking about how to place her characters to best make use of the environment: she’ll also be thinking about how to change the environment itself to create those opportunities in the first place.

(9) Resource management. This appears in nearly all western RPGs to a limited extent, mostly in the form of budgeting gold, conserving magic points and hoarding scrolls and potions. However, this standard RPG implementation of resource management isn’t usually too important at the combat level–it’s typically a broader challenge spanning a whole foray into a given area.

To liven up particular combat encounters, use a system that requires players to balance more powerful attacks against other priorities on a turn-by-turn basis. Action Point systems (e.g. the kind used in X-Com: UFO Defense and the first two Fallouts) are great for this, forcing the player to weigh a variety of factors all at once when deciding on character actions. Also good are systems where most powerful abilities use large amounts of magic points, but magic points regenerate over time (e.g. Tactics Ogre: Let us Cling Together).

(10) Give units multiple attack options. This dovetails nicely with resource management: giving each character the option of more effective but more expensive or risky attacks expands the player’s tactical options greatly. Should the player pin her hopes on her character landing a more powerful blow, or should she have him get in a quick jab and leave some resources for the character to defend himself afterwards?

These sorts of small-scale dilemmas are the bread and butter of a satisfying tactical combat system. (Fallout and Fallout 2 provide a great example of how to use this technique.)

(11) Support multiple objectives. I mean this not just in the sense that your combat system should challenge the player with different win and loss conditions; I mean this in the sense that multiple different objectives (not of the win/loss variety) should be  able to coexist within any given battle in your combat system.

This is a simple extension of the idea that a good RPG should have choices with consequences: there should be post-battle consequences for what happens during battles as well. Did she hit a town guard with a misguided arrow? Make it so the player is wanted for assault. Did she successfully protect the manor of the richest man in town? Make the rich NPC give the player a reward after the battle.

Aside from the obvious benefits such a feature creates for immersion, it also creates a richer tactical experience for the player. The goal becomes not just to win–the goal becomes to win while accomplishing as many side objectives as possible.

Because of the effort involved in setting up custom objectives for each battle, you might instead choose to set up your combat system with persistent side objectives such as maintaining character morale (X-Com) or gathering certain resources that can only be gathered during battle (treasure chests in Fire Emblem, captured majin in Eternal Poison).

In Telepath RPG: Servants of God, for instance, slain characters can only be resurrected through the use of soul charges, which in turn can only be obtained by using one character’s Soul Suck ability on a critically injured enemy during combat. The player is forced to periodically use the character who can Soul Suck in order to maintain a supply of soul charges; and within particular battles, she must weigh the risk of keeping an enemy alive long enough to harvest it against the reward of having a one-shot chance to raise a slain character later on.

(12) Allow delayed attacks. Delayed attacks add a new twist to the turn-based formula, allowing characters to attack even when it isn’t their turn anymore. Counterattacks are an effective (and, at least among Japanese strategy RPGs, common) form of delayed attack. By allowing melee units to only retaliate against melee units and ranged units to only retaliate against units at range, counterattacks further complicate unit match-ups and enforce character specialization. (Players will want to attack melee units at range, and vice versa.)

Attacks of opportunity are another form of delayed attack that encourage the player to pay extra attention to her own unit movement and placement, juggling the costs and benefits of expending all of a character’s actions during its turn versus keeping some in reserve in case enemies wander into attack range later on. These are, in short, an extension of the resource management concept we talked about in #9 above. (You can see the attack of opportunity mechanic at work with X-Com’s reaction fire system and with the guard command in Pool of Radiance.)

Interestingly, a couple of upcoming indie games (Frozen Synapse and Fray) actually use delayed attacks as the centerpiece of their entire combat systems. In these games, combat focuses around the player’s ability to guess which units will be where, when.

Well, that’s twelve. I know of no RPG combat system that uses all twelve of these techniques at once, and to be honest, I’m not entirely sure that I’d want one to! That would be one heck of a complicated combat system. But in an environment of RPGs whose combat systems err on the side of simplicity, that’s the sort of problem I really wouldn’t mind having.(source:gamasutra


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