What cool mechanic would make you instantly want to buy a game?

[Polinym]

Imagine pretty much whatever mechanic you want, but you gets bonus points if it can be applicable to a fantasy RPG. I can probably make use of whatever you've got for my purposes.

If it's not clear what I mean by mechanic, then here are some examples:
In Fire Emblem Three Houses, you can teach your units in class to influence their stats and abilities.
In Xenoblade Chronicles, you can see the future in battle.
In Banjo-Tooie, you can split up your characters to explore the world in three different ways.

[Zapp Branniglenn]

Soliciting game ideas aside, I have tried out several rpgs (and kickstarted one) on the mere existence of Action Commands. I'm a big fan of timed button presses for offensive commands and defending against attacks. That level of player participation keeps you engaged in the battle without going so far as simply building an action game with numbers in it like modern rpgs do.

[Jotari]

I want more Majora's Mask clones. I'm sure some indie studios have replicated it, but none I've heard of that have come to big enough prominence. And when I saw Majora's Mask clone I mean specifically the three day system. Majora's Mask is a fantastic game, but the conceit of the central mechanic is definitely held back both by its age and the fact that they somehow managed to couple the game together in only ten months. It's just so cool to think of it as a living world with all the virtual people in it having their own lives that go on independently, but what we got, while still being fantastic, is very half baked. There are only about half a dozen characters that actually follow a set schedule in the game and walk about the world. Gormon, Anju, the Postman are the main ones with some more minor movement with other characters, but even that is very select, with most NPCs just warping to their selected location when day or night changes. Certainly, other games have played with the idea of npcs having schedules, even before Majora's Mask there were other games that made great use of a time mechanic, I assume that's the entirety of what Animal Crossing is (not sure, it's the only major Nintendo franchise I've never touched), but what really makes Majora's Mask stand out is the time travel. These (threeish) people aren't doing the same thing every single day. We see just three days of their lives in which they do different things, and then they repeat those three days because of time travel, so, as you play more, you get more intimately familiar with what their story is and where they're going. I would like to see more games do something with this. Make a world more vibrant and loved in than Clock Town. It wouldn't be difficult and I'm a bit baffled no major studio has tried to do so, not even Zelda itself has given any consideration to ripping off Majora's Mask in the past 24 years despite it being among the most beloved titles. It seems like something video games were made to do. It's something that is uniquely tied to the interactive medium of games.

So, yeah, give me a game with a fully realized time based schedule for NPCs that has an in universe and gameplay justification for being on a loop (or no loop at all, if it's to be a game you play and finish in one sitting and are intended to play multiple times).

[Saint Rubenio]

SRPG but with something that differentiates it from the rest tends to be pretty reliable in getting me interested in games.

For an example, I've played the first two Vandal Hearts, an old PSX series with something of a cult following primarily for the first game. Well, I thought the first game was boring and fell in love with its very polarizing sequel for the same reason fans of the first one hated it: It's unique combat system, where the enemy moves a unit at the same time as you move yours. You can't stop your action once it starts, which means if the enemy you were going to attack has moved, you only strike the air, and viceversa. The point is deciphering the AI's quirks and honing your instincts to predict what their move will be, so you can move their target out of the way.

That's just an example, but yeah. Unique quirks like that often get me interested.

5 hours ago, Jotari said:

So, yeah, give me a game with a fully realized time based schedule for NPCs that has an in universe and gameplay justification for being on a loop (or no loop at all, if it's to be a game you play and finish in one sitting and are intended to play multiple times).

Ever heard of Radiata Stories?

[Sidereal Wraith]

If they ever made a Elric game the ability to use Stormbringer and the sword, having a will of its own, permanently killing a party member if you overuse it.

[Jotari]

6 hours ago, Saint Rubenio said:

Ever heard of Radiata Stories?

I have not. Is it good (because, needless to say, that's also very important).

[Saint Rubenio]

20 hours ago, Jotari said:

I have not. Is it good (because, needless to say, that's also very important).

The game works on an ingame clock. Its 100-odd NPCs, most of them located in the primary hub town of Radiata, follow different routines with a wide variety of tasks and chores they do over each ingame day. Just saying that really doesn't do justice to how varied and alive the town of Radiata feels. The amount of moving parts this 20 year old PS2 game has to keep track of is legitimately insane. You can recruit almost all of those 100 characters into your party, too, each character having wildly different requirements that are never quite spelled out but rather hinted at in their dialogue, leaving you to figure out what to do, which was a pretty fun exercise. It's almost like filling a Pokedex but you have to use your brain to catch the Pokemon instead of just throwing balls at them. I had a text file with all the hints I'd been able to figure out and everything lol

...Then there's the combat. The game is an ARPG where you can only control the main character, Jack, and give orders to your teammates, who each have a set pattern of attacks. You can't really customize the characters, but considering there's like 100 of them, the teambuilding aspect comes from choosing a combination of partners you enjoy. There are also a number of formation attacks you can learn where you attack with your teammates. The problem is that combat gets very repetitive eventually, and Jack often felt way more powerful than he should've been.

I was enthralled by the town of Radiata for a good few dozen hours, just running around, following NPCs, figuring out their schedules and deciphering the riddles they presented to be recruited. Genuinely, the most fun part of the game. When I had recruited a large portion of characters and mostly just had the main plot (and the combat) left, I ended up getting distracted by other things and not finishing the game. This does not mean the story is bad or anything, I just have a problem finishing open-world games in general. I get super distracted by sidequests (in this case, following NPCs around and trying to recruit them), then the gameplay loop tires me out and I never bother with the story.

In conclusion: I'd recommend giving it a shot just based on how perfectly it fits the description you provided earlier. Just exploring Radiata, seeing all of its moving parts and following NPCs around to see what they do is a lot of fun. Just be wary that the "prologue" portion of the game can drag on a tad - while there are places to explore there and NPCs to follow, the game doesn't open up in full until Jack joins the mercenary guild and gets his own house, which can take a while. Oh, and a couple of the game's characters have aged... ungracefully. But your mileage may vary there.

Edited May 30 by Saint Rubenio

[Jotari]

2 minutes ago, Saint Rubenio said:

The game works on an ingame clock. Its 100-odd NPCs, most of them located in the primary hub town of Radiata, follow different routines with a wide variety of tasks and chores they do over each ingame day. Just saying that really doesn't do justice to how varied and alive the town of Radiata feels. The amount of moving parts this 20 year old PS2 game has to keep track of is legitimately insane. You can recruit almost all of those 100 characters into your party, too, each character having wildly different requirements that are never quite spelled out but rather hinted at in their dialogue, leaving you to figure out what to do, which was a pretty fun exercise. It's almost like filling a Pokedex but you have to use your brain to catch the Pokemon instead of just throwing balls at them. I had a text file with all the hints I'd been able to figure out and everything lol

...Then there's the combat. The game is an ARPG where you can only control the main character, Jack, and give orders to your teammates, who each have a set pattern of attacks. You can't really customize the characters, but considering there's like 100 of them, the teambuilding aspect comes from choosing a combination of partners you enjoy. There are also a number of formation attacks you can learn where you attack with your teammates. The problem is that combat gets very repetitive eventually, and Jack often felt way more powerful than he should've been.

I was enthralled by the town of Radiata for a good few dozen hours, just running around, following NPCs, figuring out their schedules and deciphering the riddles they presented to be recruited. Genuinely, the most fun part of the game. When I had recruited a large portion of characters and mostly just had the main plot (and the combat) left, I ended up getting distracted by other things and not finishing the game. This does not mean the story is bad or anything, I just have a problem finishing open-world games in general. I get super distracted by sidequests (in this case, following NPCs around and trying to recruit them), then the gameplay loop tires me out and I never bother with the story.

In conclusion: I'd recommend giving it a shot just based on how perfectly it fits the description you provided earlier. Just exploring Radiata, seeing all of its moving parts and following NPCs around to see what they do is a lot of fun. Just be wary that the "prologue" portion of the game can drag on a tad - while there are places to explore there and NPCs to follow, the game doesn't open up in full until Jack joins the mercenary guild and gets his own house, which can take a while. Oh, and a couple of the game's characters have aged... ungracefully. But your mileage may vary there.

Sounds like there's no inuniverse justification to reset the scripted schedule though, like Majora's Mask's time travel. That's a crucial element in what I'm trying to capture. Still, interesting premise for a game. Not sure if I'll ever get a chance to play it though. The older I get the less time I have for (non-Fire Emblem) games. Still trying to get through a backlog of switch purchases I made on a Black Friday sale two years ago.

[Saint Rubenio]

4 minutes ago, Jotari said:

Sounds like there's no inuniverse justification to reset the scripted schedule though, like Majora's Mask's time travel.

Ah, I see what you mean. Yeah, it's really just a daily routine the characters follow because it's the things they do each day, there's no specific time reset element to it.

[AzureEmperor]

I would definitely like it more as an optional setting, but I remember once seeing a Faerghast video about a bootleg FE clone on Gameboy that had an interesting level-up mechanic that I think has potential to work. Basically upon every level-up your unit would get 4/5 points and you could manually choose which stats to boost yourself and I think this could be a very fun way of playing any given game on replay, imagine how busted some builds would get

[Jotari]

25 minutes ago, AzureEmperor said:

I would definitely like it more as an optional setting, but I remember once seeing a Faerghast video about a bootleg FE clone on Gameboy that had an interesting level-up mechanic that I think has potential to work. Basically upon every level-up your unit would get 4/5 points and you could manually choose which stats to boost yourself and I think this could be a very fun way of playing any given game on replay, imagine how busted some builds would get

I discussed this once on an idea for Avatar gameplay. Not assigning points specifically, but freely assigning growths anywhere from 0% to 100%. The conclusion of the discussion was that it probably wouldn't actually be that broken. As, assuming you have something like 300% growth totals to distribute, giving yourself 100% growths and three stats and 0% in the others would lead to a unit with some very significant weaknesses. Distributing points every level wouldn't be quite as drastic, as you can sure up your weaknesses as you go, but min maxing in Fire Emblem, while effective, is only ever going to make a unit effective at one thing. Compared to other genres, there's diminishing returns in making a single Fire Emblem unit too good. If they're a perfect killer than can kill anything they look at, then there still only going to be able to take our one enemy per player phase, and unless they have good defenses too, then they're not going to survive enemy phase (in fact, being good at killing is a detriment to defense in many games as it gives more enemies an opportunity to attack you), unless you also have perfect Vantage or nostank capabilities. On the other edge of the scales, a unit with perfect defense that can block enemies and not deal much damage back would be critical for walling off sections of the map and controlling the flow of enemies, but you'll still need other units to actually permanently take care of said enemies. Ultimately, to be truly dominant in Fire Emblem, you don't have to just min max, you have to max max and be good at everything, which some units in the series genuinely have been. The best Fire Emblem units are the ones who have no problem surviving enemy phase and are powerful enough to kill huge swaths of enemies as they do so, with the only real min maxing being ignoring magic and resistance. Or a skill build that allows a unit to do so without much care for their stats. So freely distributing stats, assuming a reasonably limited amount, might not be as effective for creating a broken unit as it might initially appear to be.

[Polinym]

I appreciate all the suggestions! To be more transparent, I've acutally been polishing a finished game to make the UI more appealing and put it up on Steam. The last big thing I'd like to add is some cool mechanic that makes people go "OHMYGOSH yes, awesome! I have to buy this!"  (although it will be free). So, whatever ideas you've got, keep 'em coming!

On 5/28/2024 at 8:59 PM, Jotari said:

I want more Majora's Mask clones. I'm sure some indie studios have replicated it, but none I've heard of that have come to big enough prominence. And when I saw Majora's Mask clone I mean specifically the three day system. Majora's Mask is a fantastic game, but the conceit of the central mechanic is definitely held back both by its age and the fact that they somehow managed to couple the game together in only ten months. It's just so cool to think of it as a living world with all the virtual people in it having their own lives that go on independently, but what we got, while still being fantastic, is very half baked. There are only about half a dozen characters that actually follow a set schedule in the game and walk about the world. Gormon, Anju, the Postman are the main ones with some more minor movement with other characters, but even that is very select, with most NPCs just warping to their selected location when day or night changes. Certainly, other games have played with the idea of npcs having schedules, even before Majora's Mask there were other games that made great use of a time mechanic, I assume that's the entirety of what Animal Crossing is (not sure, it's the only major Nintendo franchise I've never touched), but what really makes Majora's Mask stand out is the time travel. These (threeish) people aren't doing the same thing every single day. We see just three days of their lives in which they do different things, and then they repeat those three days because of time travel, so, as you play more, you get more intimately familiar with what their story is and where they're going. I would like to see more games do something with this. Make a world more vibrant and loved in than Clock Town. It wouldn't be difficult and I'm a bit baffled no major studio has tried to do so, not even Zelda itself has given any consideration to ripping off Majora's Mask in the past 24 years despite it being among the most beloved titles. It seems like something video games were made to do. It's something that is uniquely tied to the interactive medium of games.

So, yeah, give me a game with a fully realized time based schedule for NPCs that has an in universe and gameplay justification for being on a loop (or no loop at all, if it's to be a game you play and finish in one sitting and are intended to play multiple times).

I've actually been wanting to do something like this for awhile, as I too haven't found any sutiable Majora's Mask clones out there (or for OoT too, but that's a different matter). Is this a common lament? Does anyone else want a Majora's Mask style time loop with gameplay around scheduling, planning your route, changing future events?

[ARMADS!!!]

What game is it, may I ask?

(About the list of mechanics I like, I'll make another post here soon- probably still today- saying what they are, it's a big of a big list and I'm still er... "polishing"/sorta organizing it to be readable by anyone other than myself).

[Jotari]

3 hours ago, Polinym said:

I appreciate all the suggestions! To be more transparent, I've acutally been polishing a finished game to make the UI more appealing and put it up on Steam. The last big thing I'd like to add is some cool mechanic that makes people go "OHMYGOSH yes, awesome! I have to buy this!"  (although it will be free). So, whatever ideas you've got, keep 'em coming!

I've actually been wanting to do something like this for awhile, as I too haven't found any sutiable Majora's Mask clones out there (or for OoT too, but that's a different matter). Is this a common lament? Does anyone else want a Majora's Mask style time loop with gameplay around scheduling, planning your route, changing future events?

I have a design document sitting on my computer for a visual novel with the mechanic. Basically you need to meet ten specific people around a city within the span of a day, a version of the Traveling Salesman's Problem, only with an added layer of time as the characters themselves move around the world fullfilling their own storylines. When the day ends, the game ends, so it's designed to only last an hour or two but to be played many times to actually succeed (and be a visual novel that you can genuinely have a speed running community for). It's something I'll surely put efforts into creating some day, but it can't be fit into my life right now.

Edited May 31 by Jotari

[Polinym]

1 hour ago, ARMADS!!! said:

What game is it, may I ask?

It's essentially a pure NES-style Dragon Warrior clone with its own little twists to it. I made it in 28 days for a game jam and put it up for download on Github. I've done some major UI overhauls to it and will continue to do so, but I'm away from my main project computer at the moment. All I have is a sample GIF from a few days ago - it's Mystery of the Emblem meets Final Fantasy VI with a dash of OoT:
 

Spoiler

Since it wasn't made as a huge passion project, I'm kind of willing to just put anything in it. :)

[Defeatist Elitist]

Metric time. Decimal Time. Even just the Republican calendar on its own would probably sway me.

Edited June 14 by Defeatist Elitist

[CadetCasey]

Multi generational mechanics, where what you do in the first generation influences what happens in the second generation. I haven't played Awakening or Fates, but this mechanic is one of the biggest reasons I love Genealogy.