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I'm working on a new game. Right now the combat consists of a default attack, a healing spell, and a potion. I have tons of framework ready for all kinds of complicated interactions, and I'm wondering what games you've played that have fun and interesting skill chains, interactions, and synergies.
The only MMO I spent much time with was vanilla World of Warcraft, when the level cap was 60 and the endgame was playing Molten Core over and over. Basically your strategy was for the warrior to keep all the damage focused on himself while the priest healed and the warlock, hunter, or rogue burned down the enemy's hit points.
I've heard that Final Fantasy XI had some fun interactions among party members' abilities, like if you could pull off a certain chain of attacks, then your black mage could cast some kind of finisher, or something like that.
So anyway, I'm just trying to get some idea of what other games did that made it fun to chain different skills together.
I've heard that Final Fantasy XI had some fun interactions among party members' abilities, like if you could pull off a certain chain of attacks, then your black mage could cast some kind of finisher, or something like that.
skillchains
each weaponskill had a specific type, and you could combo off of the previous one used by someone else
once a weaponskill chain was performed, a magic user could do a magic burst on top of it
The only way you can chain abilities is if events happen
a) in a turn based mode or the combat is very slow paced, and
b) you clearly see who did what, so the abilities are very readable just from their particle effects
c) add on top of that that there should be a relatively small number of abilities, so as to not create visual "junk" or "chaos" that would prevent the player from reading the ability
Note that it's possible to read abilities from debuff icons, but you don't want your player to play the game by staring at a 10x10 pixel region waiting for a debuff icon to pop up.
So, if all three criteria are fulfilled, only then can you expect the player to react.
I don't know of any MMO that has ability synergies. As you probably know, MMOs have DPS rotations, which are already complicated enough that mastering them takes serious time, and to make things harder, you have to dodge a lot of abilities from mobs, which sometimes break the DPS rotation. Makes you struggle a lot. Dps rotations thankfully don't involve what others are doing. The only synergies are passives and nobody cares much about those.
Is your game TB, then? If so, then synergies can be discussed. I think you'd find practical and interesting examples of them in TCGs, rather than in MMOs. I'd recommend playing some Gwent, for example.
Really can't think of any other MMOs that went that route other than FFXI and I've played probably most of the MMOs on the market.
If you're looking for general inspiration outside of the cRPG market to draw ideas from: The further back in MMO history you get, the more unique classes will be -- and the more weaknesses they each had which required other classes to cover for them in group play.
EQ -- support roles came in many different flavors:
Wizards & druids had teleports(both had different destinations,) crucial for long distance travel.
Magician had the opposite -- they could teleport a group member to them.
Enchanter had buffs that focused on casters, most notably buffs that greatly increased mana regen.
Shamans had buffs that focused on melee, increased attack speed and +damage on hit were notable ones.
Bards were entirely buff focused and almost useless on their own. In a party, they could do almost anything besides damage.
LotRO has the captain class that is focused on group buffs. Rather than being a silly bard, they are the equivalent of a captain on the frontlines barking orders to the troops.
--
BTW, Chrono Trigger comes to mind when thinking of skill chains.
I'm working on a new game. Right now the combat consists of a default attack, a healing spell, and a potion. I have tons of framework ready for all kinds of complicated interactions, and I'm wondering what games you've played that have fun and interesting skill chains, interactions, and synergies.
FF XI came immediately to mind for me as well. Expand the Skillchain chart Rusty posted, you'll see it groups different weapons and their weaponskills to produce various elemental "explosions" which deal damage as a coefficient of the weaponskill that generated it. Different finishers have different levels, giving greater coefficients as finisher level increases.
The basic flow is: Player 1 executes weaponskill (WS) X > Player 2 waits ~4 seconds (there's about a 1 second window around the skillchain timer, so it's actually 3-5 seconds) after the server registers the WS (in FF XI's case, the chat log notification "Player 1 readies Weaponskill X") > Player 2 executes WS Y. If player 2 timed the WS correctly, and it is capable of chaining with WS X (that's what the chart above was for), it creates a finisher (Skillchain, SC) that does damage as a coefficient of the SC generator, increasing with SC level and various other factors (elemental weather alignment, special bonuses granted by certain WS, etc).
Take an example from the chart. Player 1 is a Dark Knight using a Scythe. He executes the Nightmare Scythe WS. Player 2 is a Samurai wielding a Great Katana. He executes the Tachi: Yukkikaze WS. If player 2 timed the WS correctly, he will cause a Detonation (fancy way of saying wind-elemental) SC. Since Detonation is a level 1 SC, it will cause ~50% of the damage that Tachi: Yukkikaze did.
Casters can also get in on the action, with Magic Burst. Basically, if a caster uses a spell with elemental damage matching the SC (so a Detonation SC would require the caster to use a wind-based spell), they can cap the SC off with another explosion, with its own coefficient. I believe it has basically the same timing as a SC.
So the final flow looks like this P1 WS + P2 WS = SC + Spell = Magic Burst.
Why am I going into such autistic detail? Because even though on paper this whole thing looks incredibly complicated and more effort then it's worth, in practice it was fucking awesome. It allowed for very high individual player skill expression (choosing the right weapon type/WS for the group's capabilities, timing SC correctly, planning out possible long chain run possibilities, ensuring proper coordination in starting/closing an SC), and, uniquely as far as I know, for group skill expression (working together to make sure everything ticked). There's a huge gap in group efficiency and killing power between the group that just spams WS willy-nilly and the group that coordinates effective SC/Magic Burst combos. I have rarely felt as satisfied playing an MMO as when I worked with a group that could pull involved SC for massive damage that allowed us to take on camps which would wreck less-proficient parties of the same level. Interestingly, the timers for SC were forgiving enough that even I, totally uncoordinated and plodding, was able to pull them off. It rewarded paying attention, rather then lightning-fast reflexes.
If you want inspiration for inter-group interactions, you could do much worse than FFXI.
I loved how some of the classes worked together in EverQuest. I explained some of it in detail in my eq thread. But Vanguard had actual developed synergies and reactive abilities and skill chains, all sorts of amazing stuff.. Best game I ever played and it no longer exists
Rift has some of the same technology but it wasn't tuned as well. Or it was but then they dumbed it down for the masses.
To expand on Kalarion's great explanation, I will emphasize the point about how party composition and the enemy type affected the skillchains your group would go for. It added another dimension to party-building beyond just "which class does the most damage right now? get 3 of those".
Another layer that may not be obvious here is that in addition to wanting a tank, a healer, and damage, you'd also be looking for mana regeneration and possibly someone to help with pulling or transportation.
And groups were incentivized to work together for those efficiencies because the game also awarded bonus experience points for killing challenging enemies efficiently.
If you want to go down a real rabbit hole, try to figure out how elemental resistances worked with time of day, day of month, enemy type, debuffs, and how recently taken elemental damage all played a part in the combo damage calculations.
Outside of FFXI, I have a fondness for games that allow interactions between abilities that are themselves whole abilities. Usually, these interactions get nerfed into the ground outside of card games like Slay the Spire.
Example 1:
Windfury gives you a 5% chance to attack an extra time.
Fun version: as written.
Less fun version: the extra attack has a 0% chance to Windfury again.
Most fun version: it works with all abilities, not just basic attacks.
Example 2:
An ability that gives the player 100% dodge for the next attack. A great ability on its own, can be used on cooldown or saved for big hits.
Another character has an ability that grants a free attack when an enemy they are flanking misses. This character also does more damage when attacking from behind.
Fun version: The 100% dodge ability can be used to trigger free attacks.
Less fun version: only grants a free attack when the enemy is misses your character. Bonus attacks don't get backstab damage.
Extra fun version: a third character has an ability that resets the cooldown of another character's last ability used to reset the combo.
Example 3:
The druid's Innervate ability in WoW that provided massive mana regeneration. It could be used offensively or for healing.
Fun version: giving other players a massive boost, time it well for best results.
Less fun version: devs allow druids to cast it on themselves too. A cycle of player feedback is kicked off that ultimately destroyed the ability's uniqueness and potency.
Outside of FFXI, I have a fondness for games that allow interactions between abilities that are themselves whole abilities. Usually, these interactions get nerfed into the ground outside of card games like Slay the Spire.
Finding game-breaking combos and optimizations is something I think is fun. In a single-player game, I feel like effortlessly destroying enemies is my reward for discovering the build. In a multiplayer game, I can see why OP skills need to be nerfed.
The only way you can chain abilities is if events happen
a) in a turn based mode or the combat is very slow paced, and
b) you clearly see who did what, so the abilities are very readable just from their particle effects
c) add on top of that that there should be a relatively small number of abilities, so as to not create visual "junk" or "chaos" that would prevent the player from reading the ability
Note that it's possible to read abilities from debuff icons, but you don't want your player to play the game by staring at a 10x10 pixel region waiting for a debuff icon to pop up.
So, if all three criteria are fulfilled, only then can you expect the player to react.
I don't know of any MMO that has ability synergies. As you probably know, MMOs have DPS rotations, which are already complicated enough that mastering them takes serious time, and to make things harder, you have to dodge a lot of abilities from mobs, which sometimes break the DPS rotation. Makes you struggle a lot. Dps rotations thankfully don't involve what others are doing. The only synergies are passives and nobody cares much about those.
Is your game TB, then? If so, then synergies can be discussed. I think you'd find practical and interesting examples of them in TCGs, rather than in MMOs. I'd recommend playing some Gwent, for example.
I'm making a single-player party-based RPG with programmable companion behavior, like the way the party AI works in Final Fantasy 12 or Dragon Age: Origins. So you can give your characters specific orders during combat, but if you haven't told them to perform that specific action, then they have a program to follow. Right now the most complicated program in my game is "If self MP < X, use a mana potion. If ally HP < Y, cast a heal spell. Otherwise, attack nearest enemy." I have some other conditions ready to use, like "If enemy has condition X," or "If enemy is weak against Y." And I want to set up some interesting choices for the player based on those.
And I don't just mean "if enemy is weak against fire, cast a fire spell." I want to set up some kind of interesting chain with different choices for what the player could do. Like different spells that give status effects, and then other spells that can only be cast on enemies that have those status effects, clearing the status, but bestowing another status effect in its place, and then a different spell that ultimately deals a lot of damage, or a spell that has some other kind of cool ability, like healing your party, or doing area-of-effect damage, or giving you an item if the enemy is defeated using a certain spell or while a certain effect is in place. Or maybe something else that I haven't thought of yet.
Dragon Age and DoS games have basic interactions like frost can sometimes freeze an opponent and the Fist spell (earth or whatever) had a high chance to super crit frozen enemies. DoS takes it further with oil + fire, and water + lightning, and frost + water, and stuff. I don't think it is much fun though because it gets old fast, all you are doing is using spells in pairs, it's childsplay. EverQuest was similar in that once people had figured everything out, it was mostly just about do this, then this. Like a Shaman is weak at healing but can slow the enemy attacks so much that people hardly take any damage. So they heal a bit but heal more by preventing damage in the first place. But their 'slow' spell can get resisted a lot, so an Enchanter should probably use their Tashania (magic resistance debuffer) first. And mages have a different debuffer called Malosinia which reduced different resistances.
Something like Rift is much better because the player has to make some choices that do different things and it affects the outcome of the fight. You have various 'builder' abilities that build up combo points in different ways and amounts (with pros and cons), and then you have 'finisher' abilities which spend the combo points on different things. So say a single enemy is fighting you and it hits hard, then you use some fast point builders and then spend the points on a spell which slows the enemy's attack speed/strength. That could have won you the fight. If the enemy is a spell caster and is nuking you then that would have lost you the fight. But you can spend the combo points on a self heal, or a long duration stun, etc. Other things which could turn the battle based on what's going on.
Vanguard was on a whole other level to that though, at least it was in Beta when it was designed to be like a real time Magic the Gathering type of thing. An enemy would use a spell and your Wizard identifies and it can counterspell it, or he could reflect it back at the caster. But your Shaman can maybe absorb the spell and convert it into healing at the last second. And it had more steps, so it had "Openers" and "Finishers" but there were a few different steps in between them, "Bridges" and whatever else they called it. And if you took a different choice/route then you could get locked into a different result. So you had to think ahead and choose an end result based on what's going on in that particular battle. In addition to this it had 'synergies' which triggered a bonus effect if you did something a bit different to interact with a team mate.
I think it's best to keep it simple and do something like that, jazz it up as much as you like. If you wanted to take it to a whole other level you could do similar to what multiboxers do which is to literally program the other characters. Macroquest is the framework people use in Everquest and then the players code their own characters to do what they want.
[GoM]
GoMSize=2
GoMSpell1=Ancient: Spear of Gelaqua
GoMSpell2=Ancient: Core Fire
GoMSHelp=Format - Spell|Target, MA Me or Mob, i.e. Rampaging Servant Rk. II|Mob
[GMail]
GMailHelp=Events currently support - Dead,Drag,GM,Level,Named,Leftgroup,Tells
GMailOn=0
GMailSize=5
GMail1=NULL
GMail2=NULL
GMail3=NULL
GMail4=NULL
GMail5=NULL
[Merc]
Help=To use: Turn off Auto Assist in Manage Mercenary Window
MercOn=0
MercAssistAt=92
[PullAdvanced]
PullLocsOn=0
[KissError]
LastCMD:=/endmacro
ErrorDateTime:=10/03/2021 00:18:26
ErrorMsg:=Cannot end a macro when one isn't running.
DataError:=NULL
SyntaxError:=NULL
RunningTime:=8009088
BuildDate:=20210924
CurrentUI:=Default
So I have a file like that for each character in my team and they all behave like real players. If the character has healing spells you set up this section with the spell:
That uses the Greater Healing spell on the MA which is the main assist / tank, and it uses it when he gets beat down to 90% health. Then you set up sections for damage and control spells and buffing and whatnot.
And then if you want to have extra conditions you tag a condition to the end of a line. And there are hundreds of conditions to do anything and you can set them up however you want. So say this:
That says only use this spell if my aggro % is less than 90, my mana is greater than 90, my health is over 70% OR I am in combat. It's complicated and takes people weeks or months to get used to playing with this stuff but it could be simplified in a game. This is just modding a game.
p.s. Last thing that comes to mind is that there's a guy on here who made a good game which is on Steam that's like a single player MMORPG. It's a 'blobber' and you have your own party that have to heal each other and stuff. But you do it all yourself manually. I liked it but I would prefer something with less micro-management.
EQ2 had a similar system, called Heroic Opportunities.
Some HO's could be triggered even solo, but the longest and most powerful chains were only possible with all 4 archetypes present.
Example 3:
The druid's Innervate ability in WoW that provided massive mana regeneration. It could be used offensively or for healing.
Fun version: giving other players a massive boost, time it well for best results.
Less fun version: devs allow druids to cast it on themselves too. A cycle of player feedback is kicked off that ultimately destroyed the ability's uniqueness and potency.
Warrior shield bash used to have a 50% chance to dispel, when it worked (in arena) and took innervate off it was game over.
TBC arena was fun because there were a lot of things like that before everything was made boring. Same deal with shield reflecting nature's grasp.
PnP RPGs, but I like Star Wars tRPG: Saga Edition (long out of print, but you can find the rules all collected online if you look a small bit) and Spheres of Power/Might (full OGL and thus has an SRD of its own, letting you read the whole system for free). Both are 3E variants, but differ greatly from the norm in character building (and many base mechanics in Sage Edition's case) by making character building built on the players selecting single "talents" from large lists of various abilities (which can be obtained in almost any order) and encourage finding combos with them.
Examples:
Wicked Strike in Saga Edition is an auto-extra melee attack upon a successful attack under certain conditions. On its own its good (or merely OK, depending on if you read "If this attack hits, you deal half of the original attack's damage to that target." as bonus damage or replacement for the normal damage damage), but the verbage of "When you damage a target with a single, non-Area Attack using the Rapid Strike Feat" is broad enough that it activates on various things its otherwise impossible to gain a second attack off of (like attacks of opportunity, or attacks that are part of force powers) which makes it really nifty. This is especially so when you get talents that add riders to your attacks and effectively double their potency.
The Alchemy Sphere of Spheres lets you make various short lived but potent potions/bombs a few times per day. Barroom sphere (various ways to gain power from being drunk) has an ability that speeds up the drawing, opening and drinking of potables to a single move action (instead of move to draw it and standard to drink it) making those from the Alchemy sphere way more useful in combat instead of just after it.
Spheres has various ways to inflict Prone on opponents, and a handful of abilities more effective on prone targets or trigger when a target is knocked prone. For example consider this string of abilities
Duelist base ability said:
Whenever you use the attack action or an attack of opportunity to attack or disarm a creature, you deal an additional 1 point of bleed damage to the target on a successful attempt, +1 for every 3 points of base attack bonus you possess; this stacks with any other bleed damage you are capable of dealing. Practitioners of the Duelist sphere never provoke attacks of opportunity when attempting combat maneuvers against a target currently taking bleed damage.
Whenever you deal bleed damage to a creature, you may slice a vulnerable point in their legs. The creature must succeed at a Fortitude saving throw or fall prone.
Whenever a creature lands prone in a square you threaten, you may make an attack of opportunity against them, dealing 1 additional point of bleed damage (this stacks with other bleed damage granted by the base ability of the Duelist sphere); this attack of opportunity considers “whenever a creature lands prone” and “whenever you succeed on a trip combat maneuver” to be part of the same trigger, and you cannot take more than one attack of opportunity due to this circumstance. If successful, the target of this attack must make a successful Acrobatics check to stand up as their blood slicks the ground beneath them. If the target is suffering from your blooded strike’s bleed damage, they suffer a penalty to their Acrobatics check equal to the bleed damage. Targets immune to bleed damage do not need to make an Acrobatics check.
Those three form a natural combo, but they all also pair well with this one from Open Hand
Axe Kick said:
When making an attack action, attack of opportunity, or additional attack granted by a class feature or talent with an unarmed strike, you may add 1.5x your Strength bonus on the damage roll rather than just your Strength bonus (this talent does not apply to off-hand attacks or other attacks where a half Strength modifier is specified). On attacks targeting prone creatures, you instead deal 2x your Strength modifier on the damage roll for your unarmed strikes.
You will deal more damage, cause a pair of debuffs and gain a chance at an extra attack (particularly likely against squishier targets like mages) with even more bonus damage just from striking normally, though since it depends on causing Bleed most of it it won't work on targets that can't bleed (without another talent) like robots and zombies. The four talents needed to pull this off can be done at very low levels (characters get a pre-determined pair of ~two non-proficiency talents during character creation, plus another one or two at first level and can swap their first level feat for another talent) and the system encourages spreading talents so that, rather than try to make one awesome thing super duper awesome, you gain more options/versatility.
The key to making good talents is having them either do multiple things, or do one thing that is broadly applicable. Nobody is going to waste a significant part of their resources (1/10th for a max level Saga character or a bit under 1/10th to 1/20th for max level Spheres character) on a talent that's only applicable under certain conditions, unless they have a way of forcing those conditions, they're conditions that will happen normally (when you're attacked) or that talent is really, really good (the last one is rare and generally only includes things that prevent death).
