How would you fix jrpgs combat to make them less repetitive

I wouldn't. If you don't like it, stop playing them.

>>3988109
We first need to identify the problems.

The biggest offender is that little strategy is needed to win
>Few options to strategically position yourself in fights
>Element systems are usually too simplistic
>Poor balance (having to grind or being OP)
>Stats rarely mean anything beyond defining who is a magic user and who is a fighter
>Few lasting consequences beyond gaining exp
>Disconnect between how you use a character and how they level up
>Long animations (fun the first few times, but that's it. Summons I'm looking at you)
>Little actual role-playing. For instance, what happens if you want to try diplomacy, or something unexpected to get out of fighting.
>Weapons and armor are usually strict numeric upgrades
>etc.

>>3988170
Many of these have been addressed in various franchises over the years.

If you're grinding outside of an NES game you're plying wrong, and it's your fault that there is little strategy involved in that case.

you can balance the game so the default attack isn't the solution to everything
or you can make the attack command itself more fun like in SMRPG, Mother 3, Legend Of Dragoon etc.
Ironically, FF1 for the NES isn't all that mindless because you have to consider who's going to attack who so your characters don't end up wasting their turns, try to think of similar limitations (or rules) that would force the player to be engaged in the fight

Quick battles where you can glance at the enemies and conclude you can just hit A, are the turn-based equivalent of the easy popcorn-enemies you easily down in a single hit in an action game, and changing things so that every single battle is a big challenge would completely change the feel of the heroes slashing through hordes of enemies as they slowly exhaust themselves trudging through the dungeon.
When the tougher enemies occasionally appear, they act as a contrast to the easy ones, giving you that "can't just hit A on this one" feeling.

Most people seeking to "improve" DQ-clones want to turn them into either half-assed SRPGs or half-assed action RPGs, but we already have those genres.

>>3988170
>Few options to strategically position yourself in fights
Doesn't really matter.
>Element systems are usually too simplistic
To what? It would be better if it gave you much better advantages though, like in Final Fantasy II you would run into those turtles that had absurd defense and to kill them quickly you'd have to cast ice spells on them.
>Poor balance (having to grind or being OP)
That has nothing to do with combat.
>Stats rarely mean anything beyond defining who is a magic user and who is a fighter
More with character development than combat.
>Few lasting consequences beyond gaining exp
You either win, lose, or run away from a battle. I don't know what you're expecting.
>Disconnect between how you use a character and how they level up
All depends on the game.
>Long animations (fun the first few times, but that's it. Summons I'm looking at you)
As said, not all games, and is an easy problem to solve with quick battles or being capable of skipping those animations with a button press.
>Little actual role-playing. For instance, what happens if you want to try diplomacy, or something unexpected to get out of fighting.
Would always depend on what you're fighting. How could to enact diplomacy on saber tooth tigers? Could you even do that to a tiger in real life?
>Weapons and armor are usually strict numeric upgrades
Even Final Fantasy I had equippable items that could be used to cast spells.

>>3988160
This. Shit thread

Play something else
I love the mindless repetitiveness of it

>>3988170
You also fuck off

>>3988221
>>3988231
>>3988160
>Stop discussing the things i don't agree with!

>>3988109
Stop playing RPGs for children and start playing real RPGs for adults.

>>3988109

You get rid of the DnD influence.

>>3988178
You have to grind in FF4 and 5.

Theres absolutely no way to survive Big Bang from Zeromus, and from Neo-Ex Death without grinding.

>>3988219
>Doesn't really matter.
Not an argument. OP asked for more interesting gameplay, and being able to move in battle to gain advantages or defend opens a lot of room for interesting mechanics.

>To what?
Fire opposes Ice
Earth opposes Wind
Light opposes Dark
X opposes Y
Is reeeeeeeeal fucking boring. You simply select the correct element and spam that attack. It would be more interesting if, maybe, using elemental attacks altered the battlefield, or "used up all the mana" of that type, making the opposing type stronger, or SOMETHING.

>Poor balance
It doesn't have to be just levels. Think of how OP something like Yell is in FFT.

>All depends on the game.
Correct, but the vast majority just have predetermined level up tables. Animation is also totally on the game, but more often than not combat is needlessly prolonged by watching the same spammed elemental spell for the 5th time.

>Would always depend on what you're fighting.
Yeah, and that could make it really interesting. If you are druid, why not try to talk with a tiger? If you are thief, does that seem like wise role-play? Maybe striking the rocks above the tiger will cause an avalanche that will defeat the tiger?

>Even Final Fantasy I had equippable items that could be used to cast spells.
True, but how many people continue to use items found relatively early in a jrpg late into one? If items, weapons, and armor were more interesting, they could still be useful in situations late into the game. Games like Nethack prove this is possible, with great success; few items become truly useless as the game progresses.

>>3988307
If anything, jrpgs needed more DnD.

>>3988109
My only problem with JRPGs is when there is a new battle every single step you take. Mother is an example.

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>>3988359
You know, just by doing something as basic as leveling white magic to lvl 4 you can win against Neo Exdeath without grinding.

>>3988360
>OP asked for more interesting gameplay, and being able to move in battle to gain advantages or defend opens a lot of room for interesting mechanics.
The problem with movement like that is that it takes more time to do battles. This isn't a strategy RPG, this is a standard one so now every single battle that has nothing to do with a story event which is often everything that isn't a boss would have you shuffling characters on a map thus really bloating the play time. It works in SRPG's due to it being more direct, you select the mission area and then progress with the game and some new areas open up relevant to the story and when you go to those areas you are greeted with a battle that will progress the story.
>Is reeeeeeeeal fucking boring. You simply select the correct element and spam that attack. It would be more interesting if, maybe, using elemental attacks altered the battlefield, or "used up all the mana" of that type, making the opposing type stronger, or SOMETHING.
Some of that sounds tedious. There already is resource management with RPG's in the form of items and mana pool, you are now furthering it with another resource of how many times you can cast an element. What these battle systems should do is give a reason for the player to use their skills in combat rather than punish them.

Anyway Chrono Cross does field changes with elements making one stronger and another weaker, but it always seems split among people that the combat mechanics are trash or are good.
>It doesn't have to be just levels. Think of how OP something like Yell is in FFT.
I read it in regards of leveling up since that is all you put. Though it is hard to constantly play test it to figure everything out when it is just your team figuring it out.

>>3988360
>Yeah, and that could make it really interesting. If you are druid, why not try to talk with a tiger? If you are thief, does that seem like wise role-play? Maybe striking the rocks above the tiger will cause an avalanche that will defeat the tiger?
Though most games don't have those sorts of classes, and I don't have any faith in level design when you see how most action JRPG's lack it as well.
>True, but how many people continue to use items found relatively early in a jrpg late into one?
Items don't have to last throughout the entire game, the player could gain a skill that makes the items utility obsolete. There's nothing bad about upgrading your equipment due to earlier equipment not having a use.

>>3988375
You can get gibbed by Big Bang or Almagust super easily.

Its literally why I've never finished a 4JF. I just get bored of grinding my shitty classes.

>>3988397
kain can literally solo zeromus if you time his jumps right

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>>3988109
> How would you fix jrpgs combat to make them less repetitive / mindless.

Already been done.

Reduce the garbage walking encounters and focus on challenging fixed place encounters. Skip animations or other time consuming eyecandy.
Basically just copy Wizardry properly.

>>3988359
That's not true at all.

I beat Exdeath at level 42 with a party of no-jobs who had NEVER changed their job class except to get run from the Thief job.

Didn't break any rods either.
Just swap weapons like a madman.

I also killed Omega.

>>3988397
It's Almagest, and with the white magic Shell it's fairly harmless.

Make the combat harder but rarer
More enemies per encounter
Harder enemies that are as damaging as you

Instead of spending 30s in an encounter and waking for 20s until the next one, better to spend 60s into an encounter and walk 40s to the next one

Also, make meta important. I liked when in Nocturne you would, sometimes, get a game over on hardest for meeting random enemies having a demon in your party weak to their attack hitting all and basically wipe you out before you had a single turn, forcing you to reload and make a new party before wandering at that spot again.

>>3988424
This.

>>3988237
>"I don't like game genre and it's tropes, they should change to fit my taste!"

Fuck off, you're as bad as fucking SJW.

Original topic is dumb so ill ask this

ATB or no ATB?

>>3988109
More player agency in the gameplay which effects damage dealt, damage taken, and increases the chance of avoiding damage all together. Paper Mario already does this but it should be and should have been industry standard even then

Pseudo-random encounters which are actually challenging. Random encounters are frustrating and considering the developer has to assume the player will trigger a battle every two feet they have to make them easy to beat. An encounter system for the over world like in The Adventure of Link would work great in all JRPG but instead it's in an ARPG which is an unconventional Zelda title on the NES instead. Chrono Trigger pseudo-random encounters for dungeons would be awesome also. Both these allow the player to decide whether or not it's worth engaging in a battle of exp and properly allocate resources in accordance.

Spell charges for mages instead of MP encourages the player to use spells wisely instead of spamming their most powerful spell and chugging MP curatives.

Group level instead of individual character level. This allows players to use any character they want on the fly between battles and makes having plenty of characters that can have vastly different skills and abilities from one another worth including in the game as players will be more inclined to try out different characters instead of the ones they already have leveled up

Horizontal gear upgrades instead of vertical upgrades. Let purchasable gear have trade offs that doesn't necessarily make one piece better than the other. Instead of giving the player the option to by a sword that does +58 more damage than the last sword, give them the option to choose between swords that do the same damage but have different collateral effects i.e. speed boost, poison, life drain, fire elemental etc. This gives the player more options and toys to play around with and makes repeated use of individual weapon sprites if the game has them for each weapon. The same for armor as well

Lots of people ITT need to try the SaGa series.

Every time I see people talking about their ideas to "improve" JRPGs, it really just shows me how few JRPGs they've played.

>>3988424

This game is fun until you get good enough at it that every fight is basically just 2 minutes of watching the characters' super animations pop off. The rest of the game is cool enough that it gets a pass, though. I'll admit I didn't get tired of the animations until about 30 hours in on NG+.

>>3989135

ATB doesn't really add anything, all it does is drag the fights out. It's why I prefer early DQ to early FF.

>>3989169
>Spell charges for mages instead of MP encourages the player to use spells wisely instead of spamming their most powerful spell and chugging MP curatives.

Or you can just make MP curatives rare/hard to come by.

>>3989169
I'd say this plus more world interaction via items like Wild Arms which makes dungeons more interactive and entertaining to go through than just walking down a straight corridor with the occasional split in the path which leads to a deadend

>>3989169
>Paper Mario already does this but it should be and should have been industry standard even then
That is up to people. Sometimes I enjoy it, but I don't want every JRPG to be like that. Battles should be based upon stats.

> Random encounters are frustrating and considering the developer has to assume the player will trigger a battle every two feet they have to make them easy to beat.
That is if the games even use random encounters instead of enemies roaming the map. Even then some amount of people do enjoy random encounters. There is enough games between the two as time went on.

>Spell charges for mages instead of MP encourages the player to use spells wisely instead of spamming their most powerful spell and chugging MP curatives.
It is decent but it still promotes saving your mana pool. Battles that are difficult enough that you need to use something more than a standard attack along with different mechanics for generating points to spend of using battle skills would be the best. It would make non-boss fights more threatening thus more interesting, and that you'll need to utilize more of your skills during those battles and possibly lead to more experimentation with the pool of skills since it isn't gimping the player by having less MP before the boss.

>Group level instead of individual character level.
Not all games are the same and have different growth and customization mechanics.

>Horizontal gear upgrades instead of vertical upgrades.
No. Horizontal wouldn't be bad, but you need vertical upgrades.

adding survival horror elements, gore, and a dedicated vacuum cleaner user

>>3989185
You can still spam high level spells like ultima in FF6, which makes almost every other offensive spell pointless, to completely wreck the boss

Having spell charges like the first Final Fantasy makes other slightly weaker spells useful and doesn't completely circumvent the difficulty of a boss

>>3989198
By the time you actually get Ultima in FF6, you're more than well prepared for any boss in the game due to its extremely slow learn rate and the amount of grinding needed to get the thing. Besides, you can easily hit the damage cap long before you even get Ultima in 6.

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>>3989197

You have a specific game in mind, don't you? This was a really cool game.

>>3989198
Spell charges hurt damage mages more than it helps them since now they're only good for the boss because players won't want to use any of their charges without worrying about having to deal with dead weight on the boss. Or the opposite effect happens and you have so many effective charges on the relevant spell tiers that it doesn't matter.

No one actually uses Ultima on random encounters unless they grinded to the point that they enough MP to be spending 99 MP per cast. Granted FF6 had that broken MP reduction accessory but that can easily solved by not letting such things exist.

>>3989191
What are you even arguing? You sound like a purist that thinks JRPGs should all be Dragon Quest 1 clones. Your line of reasoning is essentially "this quality of life improvement has already been done once, that means it can never be done again." They are already so many JRPGs with the same cookie cutter formula that there's virtually no reason to play one over the other for anything more than the story and so minor gimmick that hardly changes the way the game is played. If stats are all you want from a game, why not just occasionally roll a die before making a choice while reading a visual novel?

>>3988109
That's the easiest problem to solve. Do it EarthBound/Chrono Trigger style. Enemies on screen, potential of instant win, lower encounter rates and increase XP.

>>3989243
>If stats are all you want from a game, why not just occasionally roll a die before making a choice while reading a visual novel?
What stats would I be rolling for? Why wouldn't I get two dice? What about three? How about twelve?

>>3989178
FFX was arguably the best battle system from a mechanics perspective, and no ATB in sight. The turn queue adds tremendous strategy to the game.

>>3989204
It's just about as slow to learn as any other high level spell which is effectively less useful. The point is it makes other spells pointless

>>3989223
Your first point is wrong as the issue arises not from using high level spells on common mobs, but spamming high level spells during boss fights. Ideally the player would have more than the necessary amount of level 1 fire/ice/thunder spells to deal with any mob in the dungeon, but would only be able to use a level 5 spell once or twice against a boss before having to use lower level spells to finish the job. This retains the difficulty of the fight.

>>3988109
Have health and MP completely restored after each fight so every encounter can be made more difficult to accommodate. Lower encounter rate and increase experience earned also

>>3989253

FFX is great for the main game, but its postgame gets pretty silly since it quickly just becomes about abusing quick hit and since the sphere grid means all characters can do everything equally well, choosing your party basically just comes down to who has the best limits. Still, at that point it's fine. It's a very well-designed game.

>>3989258

Since you mentioned sidegrades for gear, you should also consider sidegrades for skills and magic. Having a fire skill that does small damage with a high chance of burn and a fire skill that does tons of damage to all enemies but no extra effects, for example.

>>3989260

SaGa does this for HP but takes it one step further by keeping track of LP: every time a character is KO'd they lose one LP, and if they lose it all they perma-die.

>>3989251
You can use as man sides as you want, twerp
If you roll 1-6
>1. I-I-I love you too onii-chan!
roll 7-12
>2. I think we should forget this ever happened and never tell mom and dad

>>3989251
>>3989243
That has nothing to do with stats, it's just a factor of randomness.
In a dating sim your stats will determine the reactions to your choices.

>>3989262
Play FFX w/o sphere grid to really have a challenge. Towards the end your characters die an obscene amount, but I found it quite interesting because without thought I would be annihilated readily, but with careful management I could survive almost anything.

>>3989289
Exactly, I have no clue what I am basing my roll off of.

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>>3988109
It's not really a problem outside of old or extreme examples, the "straw rpg". The game in that pic, for example, I would consider archaic but it already has a modern remake (pic related). A good rpg will have enough content so that it's not boring.

This isn't even getting to rpgs with more inventive mechanics (I like FFV's system and the smt series).

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>>3988109
>>3988170
>I only played garbage like FF or DQ and the occasional cutscene laden playstation JRPG so the entire genre is like that
>I will now proceed to make a list of atrociously basic things that have been done since decades by numerous franchises to show how how much I don't know about the topic at hand
Shit thread, waste of bandwidth, kill yourselves.

>>3990002
Name some Jerperguers with good gameplay.

FF VI, VII and Chrono Trigger considered 3 of the greatest games of all time.

So Mcfucking kill your self

>>3990006
>Jerperguers

The fuck? Maybe he'd name some if he knew what you were talking about you dumb foreignshit

>>3988109
all jrpg would be better if they had 50% less battles than thhey do now.

>>3989258
In order to get Ultima you either have to fight 256 battles to uncurse the shield, then fight 99 more battles or trade for the Ragnarok summon which requires you to get Locke and fight 99 battles with it.

Things like the -ga spells which are more than enough since most things in FF6 have a weakness are more accessible and less costly per cast at that.

>>3989258
>Spamming high level spells during boss fights
That would be a problem if everyone in FF6 didn't casually hit the damage cap without any care in the world. So what if Terra or Celes hits a boss for 9999 damage per Ultima cast when Sabin does it for 0 MP per Bum Rush, Edgar/Mog can do it multiple times with that Dragoon setup or the Valiant Knife/X-Fight gimmick that Locke has. That's not even considering the fact that a double Earring setup boosts magic damage to the point that Ultima is a waste of MP because Flare/Holy/-ga hits for 9999 too without costing as much MP per shot.

The only time spell charges would be a meaningful limitation for mages is if their damage was miles ahead of the physical characters and so its a way to keep things balanced. Unfortunately, that's usually far from the case as the physical characters tend to scale far better than mages do in most JRPGs.