Hard time making a minimalist rpg engine

News & General Discussion
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Im working on a cross between Diablo and a MOBA and am discovering that the rpg mechanics I’ve been working on over the years are difficult to scale back and would love to hear some opinions on it.

To start, it’s two teams of 4 racing through 3 dungeons with intertwining paths. Who ever gets the last hit on Not-Diablo wins. There are three main bosses that must be defeated and 3 optional mid bosses.

I really want an emphasis on teamwork so there is a health bar and a balance bar.

The balance bar determines how much damage they take, give, critical chance, and can be knocked down if it reaches 0.

Ideally I’d like it so that ultimately it’s faster to move through the dungeon as a team, but players are able to go solo.

Okay, so here’s where I need help:

I’m not certain if the players should choose their stats to level, or if they should grow automatically and let the player just choose skills to level.

Also, should I pool some stats together for simplicity sake or keep them per case to give me absolute control over player growth?

These are the stats I’m considering:
HP - points until death

Conscious - points until unconscious. The max amount is the current HP

Resource - mana/stamina. Like HP for skills.

Balance - points until knocked down. Also effects percent of attack class. And is tied to resource like conscious is tied to health.

Attack class - the agility of a player applied to attack rolls for both defense and offense. It also increases the damage/speed of agility based weapons.

Force - the strength of a player applied to attacks to determine how much balance is lost along with the weight of a weapon. It also increases the damage/speed of strength based weapons.

Armor - decreases damage taken.

Poise - armor for your balance.

Carry - amount weight amount of equipment the player can carry. Attack class is decreased based on what percentage is used up.

Recovery - how fast the player regains consciousness and balance.

You can see how this just starts to splinter up and gets messy.

I figured I could just do four base stats and derive all these from them, but I’m afraid that it would slow down the game when it’s all about racing to the end.

Opinions?

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Is the big idea that players gain XP during a match, and then in between matches, use these to level up their character (who thereby gets stronger over time)?

Or is all this character growth expected to happen within a match? (That seems like a poor goal for the pace you’ve described.)

If it’s the former, then I say, make it as complex as you like. It’s fun to ponder and tinker with your character in between matches (if the game is designed for it). In fact, maybe consider bucking convention and allow players to REDUCE some skills/stats in order to raise others (probably with some penalty, e.g. reduce a stat by 2 to give you 1 free point to spend elsewhere). Why not? The more players can tinker with their character, the happier they’ll be.

The only drawback I see to this complexity is that it will be overwhelming for newbies. So, maybe set up a progression that unlocks them gradually.

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I think you have to start by defining the player experience in just a few words or a sentence at most.

Then you have a very clear goal you can align all the details towards.

"I really want an emphasis on teamwork "

That is a start ^, but I don’t know if it is specific enough.

For example: “A role based co-op dungeon crawler where no victory comes without sacrifice.”

So the crux of that game is that the team cannot get through areas without some players making sacrifice for the team. So it’s about social reward and team decision making, however you want to get into the details doesn’t matter. But now you got a clear frame to work from.

Another example " A role based coop dungeon crawler about team diversity."

In this one the big idea is that the team has very diverse roles (each one designed for different player psychology) and each one is necessary at some point to get through a dungeon. Again, this puts emphasis on teamwork. Some stages the wizard will be weak and vulnerable so the warrior has to guard them. In other stages vice versa. This way, at some point, each player knows that they will need to rely on each other.

So by simplifying the description of the game it’s easier then to identify what details you need.

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Sorry I just got back to this. Been busy

The idea is that the player levels up in each match, similar to a MOBA.