digibutter.nerr

[Super Ultimario]

This is somewhat of a rethinking of my old ideas for a new battle system, with some major changes:
http://digibutter.nerr.biz/viewtopic.php?t=102647

Francis, I've heard you saying you don't like the current system, how it's basically "whoever attacks first wins".


I have a few suggestions for something completely different, more turn-based and strategy. While coins will factor into this, they won't completely decide the winner, unlike the current system. In the current system, if you have enough coins to buy more items than the other guy, you basically win in the end.

This would likely have to wait until Nerr 2.0 to be added, as it completely changes everything about the current systems.

Races

When you first join Nerr 2.0, you have a choice of what race (species) to be. There are many races, such as:

Goomba
Koopa
Human
Toad
Shy Guy

And others, but most are still in the planning stages. What race you choose affects what attacks you learn as you level up, your basic stats, and even to an extent what Equipment you can use. So choose wisely*

Goombas would have nice stats overall, especially Power and Speed, but are more limited in equips and unique moves than others.

Koopas are pretty much the opposite of Goombas. Their stats are kind of low (highest being HP and Defense) but they have a wide variety of moves and equipment.

Humans can also use a wide variety of moves and equipments (but not as much as Koopas) and have kind of low stats (but higher than Koopas, and well-rounded balanced stats). They have no Race Advancements.

Toads have decent stats, mainly in HP and Speed. They specialize in Healing moves, but don't have many powerful offensive ones. They have no Race Advancements

Shy Guys have nice Power and okay Speed, but everything else is pretty low. They have a wide variety of Race Advancements.

*There will be a way to change Race. You buy a certain item in a Shop ("Goomba Orb" or something) for a surprisingly small amount of coins, and use it on yourself to change Race (it cannot be used on others). All Equipment you have will be unequipped, and your stats will change slightly to fit your new Race (Ex: When you change from Human to Koopa, your Speed and Power will go down a bit, and your HP and Defense will go up) Some Equipment you already have may become unusable (Ex: When you change from Human to Goomba, you won't be able to use your Hammer anymore, since Goombas can't use Hammers)

Race Advancements

Certain Races can have Race Advancements, which allows a Race to become more specialized. These can be chosen as you level up, or if you want a Race Advancement and are past the level to get it, you can buy your Race Advancement at a Shop for a small amount of coins.

A Goomba can become a Gloomba, which are more focused on HP and less on Speed, and also commonly use negative status effects such as Poison. A Goomba can also become a Micro Goomba, these have very low HP and Defense but very high Speed and very high Power.

Koopas can become Magikoopas, the most varied and creative race in the game. They have tons of magic spells which can do many things, including status effects, stat boosts, stat lowering, healing, etc. Koopas can also become Koopatrols, less varied than regular Koopas but have nice stats overall, especially in Defense and Power.

Shy Guys can have Race Advancements into nearly anything: Fly Guys (A lot like Shy Guys, just more Speed and attacks), Snifits (With nice special attacks), Pyro Guys (specialize in Power and Fire), Medi Guys (Nice Healing with low Power), and tons of others.

Stats

There are basically 6 stats: Power, HP, Defense, Speed, FP, and SP.

Power increases the damage you deal.

Defense decreases the damage you take.

HP is the amount of HP you have. When it is sent to 0, you lose.

Speed determines turn order. The higher Speed moves first. If there is a tie in a team battle whichever has the faster allies moves first. If it is still a tie or it is not a team battle, whoever moves first is selected randomly.

FP is used up when you use special attacks. If you do not have enough to use a special attack (Ex: Super Jump uses 7 but you only have 4) you cannot use the attack unless your FP is restored.

SP is a bar for super special star-based attacks. You start out with 1 SP, the attack Focus (restores SP), and no attacks that use SP. SP very slowly restores itself each turn in battle or each day out of battle, about 1 SP every 3 or 4. More SP and SP-using attacks are handed out by Francis for events, wars, parties, quality members he believes deserve it, etc.

Items

There will still be Items, but they will work very differently. They won't be the main method of attacking, and instead of doing bland things like dealing 10 damage or restoring 10 HP (though they would do that stuff too), they may deal 5 Fire damage to all foes, or boost your Power by 4 for 3 turns, or something like that. They also won't do much with posts/the site overall, aside from the occasional Searchlight, Smoke Ball, or Cracker Launcher(?)

Equipment

There are basically three kinds of Equipment: Weapon, Armor, and Badge. You have one slot for each.

Weapons increase your Power (and sometimes affect your Speed), and very rarely have extra effects as well. They can either be Physical, for Physical attacks that can be countered by certain effects (Ex: Punching Gloves, Headbonk Cap), Projectile, for things that shoot out (Ex: Star Gun), or "Weapon", for getting near an opponent and hitting them with a weapon, can be blocked or countered by few effects (Ex: Hammers, Axes, Swords)

Armors increase your Defense (and sometimes HP, and also sometimes affect Speed).

Badges are not like Paper Mario badges. You can only equip one, and they have various stat boosts and misc. effects.

Also, some equips may actually fit into more than one of these categories. For instance, Shell-based Equips can be worn as Armor or kicked as a Weapon.

Experience Points and Coins

As you post* and battle others (more on battling later), you gain Experience Points and Coins. Coins work much like the current system, with some changes. You earn 1 coin per post*, and you can spend these posts on items/equips in the Shop or give them to others. Maybe even store them in a bank and get interest over time. Before battling someone, you can choose to put a entry fees and/or prizes on the battle.

You also get experience points as you post* and win battles. When you get enough, you level up. I think it should be about 50 posts to level up each time. When you level up, you are not fully healed like Paper Mario and such, and you have the choice to level up any of the following: HP (+5), FP (+5), Power (+1), Defense (+1), Speed (+1). SP is not upgradable by leveling up. As you level up, you also gain access to more items/equips and learn more moves.

*Posts in Off-Topic and RPOT do not increase Coins or Experience Points.

Partners/Pets

Partners/Pets...are a feature I'm not really sure about. With the issues of it not doing enough damage to get through opponents' defenses (lol, tanks) and the chaos of pets/partners with 6 or 8-person battles...I doubt we could make it work. Meh.

Battles

This is the most important feature. Without it being done right, we could have the most creative moves, items, equips, etc., and it wouldn't make a difference. If the battling feature itself isn't done well, everything falls apart.

First, joining a battle. Near the top of the site, there would be a button or link to "Battles". It would work like our Tournaments in a way (EXCEPT A LOT MORE ACTIVE LOL. Also, you might want to go to the Tournaments page for a good example of kinda what I'm talking about). It would be set up similar with the Name, Players (1/2, 2/4, 4/6, etc., like tournaments), Prize, and Entry Fees of each battle shown on the main page. It might have an image, date it was started, and/or the name of who started it, but that's not necessary. Completed Battles would not be shown, or maybe they could be on a different page. You click on the name (or possibly image) of a tournament to see more. There would be a thing detailing all sorts of things about the battle (See "Creating a Battle" form, except with everything already filled out and uneditable). Below this, there would be a list of everyone in the Battle, with Team 1: or Team 2: before their names. You can join it (if it has spots open) by clicking one of the links at the top. There will be two links, one for Team 1 and one for Team 2. If a team has its max. amount of members, you cannot join it. If the battle allows items, you will then be taken to a separate page and type in what items you will use.

Creating a battle. Click on "Battles" near the top of the site. Then click on the "Create new battle" link near the top of that page. This would take you to another page with many fields to fill out. They would be the following:

_____ means there an area where you can type/paste something. If there are less than 5 _s, that is the number of letters/numbers you can put there.
-> means drop-down menu options
[] means Checkbox/Checklist
?? means I'm not sure whether it'd be there or not.

Name of Battle: _____
Description: _____
Number of Players on Team 1:
->1
->2
->3
->4??
Number of Players om Team 2:
->1
->2
->3
->4??
((Yes, you can have battles like 2 vs. 3. This isn't suggested, but it could work, especially if the outnumbered team is higher leveled.))
Entry Fee: __
Fees go to winning pot? []
Your coins for prize: ___
Other prize: _____
Image??: _____ (automatically wrapped in [img] tags, if it is not a working image you will get an error message and chance to edit it)
Banned: _____ (Type in the name of an item/move??/equip you want to ban. If the name you typed in is misspelled or does not exist you will get an error message and chance to edit it. You can also click a button for more fields to fill with more banned items/moves??/equips.)
Heal all participants' HP after battle? []
FP? []
SP? []
Revert Items/Coins to state they were before battle? [] (Ex: If you used a Super Shroom during the battle and stole somebody's Ultra Shroom, at the end of the battle they'd get their Ultra Shroom back and you'd have your Super Shroom again.)
Amount of Items allowed per member: __
Gain Exp? []

*There is no fee for creating battles.

I've covered pretty much everything except the actual battles. When in a battle, you cannot be in/join other battles, sell anything you are using/have used, change Equipment, change Race/Race Advancements, Level Up (if you gain the experience points for a level up by posting during a battle, the actual level up will be delayed until after the battle. Basically, nothing that screws up or even affects your battle.

This system will act like most RPG's. There will be turns in which you can do stuff--turn order is decided by Speed, like I said before. All of your opponents' moves, what they did, and current stats and items would be listed somewhere as they happen. I was thinking kind of a chatbox-like thing, it displays everyone's HP, FP, status conditions, stat boosts, and items near the top of the page, with links to their profiles. It would list what everyone does right after they do it, and what it did.

Kinda like this:
UltiMario 32/40 HP 15/15 FP (Burn) (Super Mushroom)-------Cid 19/25 HP 40/40 FP
? Block 30/30 HP 25/25 FP---------------------------------------Ph1r3 Mario 34/35 HP 22/30 FP (Fire Flower)

? Block used Shooting Star, 6 to Cid and Ph1r3 Mario.
Ph1r3 Mario used Super Flame, 8 damage to UltiMario and Burn. Ph1r3 used up 8 FP.
UltiMario attacked Ph1r3 Mario, 5 damage.
Cid used Mushroom, Ph1r3 Mario was healed by 10.

When it's your turn, there are different buttons for what you want to do. Using any of these takes up your turn. They are: Attack, Item, Special, and Misc.

With Attack, you just use your basic attack.

Item, you, well...use an Item. I don't think I really need to say more about this.

Special lets you use a special attack (They often use FP.)

Misc. is for miscellaneous other actions, such as Running Away or Defending.

The battle ends when all of your opponents have lost all their HP or surrendered/Run Away.

Balance

To support this system, there will have to be close moderation on keeping it balanced. There should be an official forum for discussing this system (not separate site, I mean sections like Gaming or Feedback). Or at least a stickied topic for dealing with balance issues and being able to talk about it a lot in Feedback.

First, there should be no multi-hit attacks AT ALL, or at least very strict limits on them. In a system where you can have +20 Power on a 1-damage, 3-strike attack...you could deal over 60 damage in a single attack. Of course it's be a bit less with Defense and all that, but few people are going to be extreme enough to go "5 FP, 10 HP, 1 POWER, NO SPEED, DEFENSE ONLY, FINAL DESTINATION". Meaning you could beat the crap out of nearly everyone by being like that except switching Power with Defense and throwing in more Speed and multi-hit attacks. And if you ran into an extreme Defense abuser you'd both deal like 1 damage a turn and eventually beat them since you hit first and both have equal HP.

Next, attacks that hit all opponents should have severe limits on them. Such as ignoring Defense/Power, using high amounts of FP, etc. Without limits like these, it will be easy for an above-mentioned Power-abuser to hit all for like 20 damage.

And Defense abuse should have its own limits. If you have enough Defense that your opponents literally can't even damage you...well, that just fails. First, no attacks can deal 0 or 1 damage due to Defense vs. Power issues. They all do 2 instead. Not much, but something. There should also be some equips/attacks/items that counter such tanks. For instance, some moves like Magic Ray that ignore Defense entirely...but have a low maximum damage that they can deal (such as 5). Or equips that cannot deal less than 4 damage. Etc.

Misc.

Also, to make this system work we'd have to scrap or highly edit some of our current items and features. I think we'd have to scrap Lives and Usershops. We'd have to highly edit items like Gooey Bomb, so Gooey Bomb would be more like "In 3 turns, deal 12 damage (Ignore Defense/Power) to the foe hit by it".

Comment away, peoplez. I'm open to suggestions and such on how to improve this. Don't be scared away by the massive walls of text. Also, I probably won't update with more races and example items and equips until Francis comments here and says he likes this system. There wouldn't really be any point in giving more examples for something that might not happen...

I'd really like it if this system (with some changes to fit the site and not be too hard to program, of course) were to be programmed into Nerr 2.0. It'd be a lot better, more balanced, and more widely-used than our current system, and if this gets added we could improve upon it and even have event boss battles and such. It could make the site a lot more fun and increase activity overall.

[Mana7]

HOLY SHIT THATS AN AWESOME IDEA from the bit i skimmed through

[Emil]

I read all of this.

Amazing idea, really.

[Super Ultimario]

[Super Tenebrae]

Needs more races *cough* Mutated Hedgehog*cough*. Very good Idea though.

[Die4Less]

I like it. About races though. Look at me. I would fit none of the above. What then?

[Super Ultimario]

[Die4Less]

[Zelnor]

Nice idea, but if the Magikoopas get all the diverse magic, wouldn't it unbalance ? Similarly, would denying one race race advancements not unbalance the game ? And what about creativity ? I spend months getting Zelnor out of Gary Stu Territory and I'd like to use the character, but every RP I enter spontaneously dies.

[Chaos-Stev-0]

Ulti, I love your sexy mind. However, I must put up a few things that aren't stated.

For the equipment system, wouldn't you at least have a set amount of EP (equip points). If someone gets strong enough, they could equip the best badge, best armor, and best weapon. This way, they have to choose more wisely on what to equip. And for the races, how am I supposed to fit a mutant Chao into their? There should be a thing where you choose what kinda race you want, but be able to rename it. That way, we won't be having Stev-0 (a mutant chao) shown as a Goomba. But other than that, your idea is pure gold.

[Super Ultimario]

Hm, I like the renaming Races idea. Just as long as there's some way to tell what race it actually is. Zelnor, it's balanced by races with more fancy attacks having overall lower stats, and the other way around. Magikoopas have the most creative attacks, but not way better than everyone else. As for Equip Points...I like it. I think I can add that in there.

[Zelnor]

If there is a point-based system like in Guild Wars ,will we decide our stats and skills via points ? Then Francis could create coinsinks in the way of an item to reset stat / skill points.

[MALAK]

Or instead of races, they could be classes. That'd work alot better. :U

[Chaos-Stev-0]

Actually, Classes do sound more traditional...

[Captain Blue]

I demand that there be a ninja class with double sword :U

I support the idea of classes.