I never found MARDEK's stats and stuff to be overly complicated or obscure, I always considered it fairly simple compared to most RPGs I've played, and I liked it for that. I don't mind trying to simplify it further though.
I've written very lengthy explanations of all the things that I loved about MARDEK, gameplay-wise, that put it above all other RPGs I've played, and why I consider MARDEK chapter 2 to be one of the most delightfully designed RPGs ever. Unfortunately that was on the last version of Fig Hunter, which I think is gone now.
Also I very strongly agree with the sentiment that each stat should be worthwhile, and I like being in control of it. I always love when increasing a stat by 1 is a noteworthy difference, and a choice that I made.
In a sense, a lot of MARDEK was a balancing act with your stats, and each thing being so valuable is what made this so engaging. Elemental resistances were extremely important and I liked how the story and gameplay aspects of it combined to make it clearly a core part of the universe, but you also could never fully focus on your elemental resistances without neglecting other stats.
Overall the system described in the post seems interesting and I want to see how it develops, there's only two things I read that I have some concern with.
Firstly the idea of each character having a preferred food is interesting and helps with character building, but I do worry that it might just be a bit inconvenient if it's too complex. This is a conversation I had recently with other people I know who are making RPGs. I just hope such a system of favourites is very straightforward.
I'd seen people planning to have each individual food item have some varying levels of interest in it that would change how effective it is, but that personally doesn't sound fun at all to manage. Like trying to feed a picky family that just so happens to have an RPG tacked on. Seems unnecessary to me.
To me it'd be a lot more reasonable to have very clearly defined favourite food groups that they either like or don't, that way it's not hard to think about whether they might like it or not, while still keeping the positive aspects of the system. That's possibly what you already had in mind though, not saying that it can't work and you'd be making a mistake, just bringing up a concern.
And secondly I personally don't find the idea of a character being weakened by low health to be appealing. While it makes sense as far as realism goes, I think it would make things quite a bit less engaging.
The option of trying to make a last ditch effort to win a battle even though you're rather weak, or putting off healing for a bit to do other things and the excitement of effectively making a comeback or taking a risk and it paying off seems like it'd be lost. You'd probably just have to constantly keep healing all the time.
Maybe it could work out with some experimentation, but it feels off to me.
Despite that, I look forward to where things go, and I'm glad it seems you're enjoying yourself with it.
1
Tobias 1104~4Y
I was planning something like this for the food items:
There are six food groups, in two sets of three: Meat, "Bread", and Greens all healthy foods that restore Body; Chocolate, Savoury, and Cake are all snacks that restore Mind. Characters like one from each group, dislike one, and feel neutral about the other.
So a character might like Cakes and Greens, but dislike Meat and Savoury snacks. Anything more complicated than that would just be irritating, I think!
Also, rather than having a bunch of food items with varied effects that you'd need a guide (or a Curry Dex...) to keep track of, I was thinking each of these food groups would have a limited number of items within it. So there might be small, medium, and heavy Meat food items, which restore progressively more of their respective stat but delay your next turn by more as well.
Usually food in RPGs is something I ignore, because there are so many different meals and they have such small effects (usually not even anything significant) that it never seems worth the bother. So the aim of this would be to be simple to understand and use, and, like with the stats, for every food item to be worth using.
I actually quite like having to restore health using these food items often! I'm one of those players who accumulates tons of items that I never use, and I like the idea of having it so you 'have' to use restoratives often rather than just stockpiling them. I think I might lessen the potency of healing magic for that reason; not to the point where it's irritatingly useless, but I don't want it to make the food items obsolete.
I can understand the thought about lower health meaning lower attack; at first I thought it might be unappealing too, and I was fully expecting a negative response to this because of that.
In my experience testing so far, though, I've found that it actually introduces different kinds of strategies and decision-making. With the familiar system, there's really only one bit of information to consider: "am I at low health? Should probably heal then". Here, you might consider whether it's worth eating quickly before an attack, or whether you're healthy enough to finish your opponent off.
It also affects how you choose targets. Consider a situation where you're against three opponents with 60 Body each, and you've got two characters who can each inflict 50 damage. If you have them both focus on one target to take it out, as you typically would in any other RPG, then two full-health opponents will get attacks in afterwards. However, if you attack two different targets, they'll both hit you at low health, and their attacks will do little - perhaps even nothing - and they might even knock themselves out in the process.
And remember, if you eat a small food item, you usually get your next turn immediately after, so that affects decisions too. You don't need to choose to heal or attack if you can do both. I've also added a 'food menu' button that lessens the amount of menu navigation you need to do, to make it as easy as possible.
1
Refurin24~4Y
That food system seems a lot more manageable than some I've seen people try before, it sounds good and provided it's clear from just looking at them what food group they fall under then I doubt it should be too much of a hassle. Especially with a rather limited pool of items, it sounds like it could be a fun element with heavy food filling a less-used but important niche in preventing catastrophic disaster or recovering in longer periods of downtime.
From what you've described, this turn system reminds me a bit of FFX in that sense, which sounds really appealing to me. A turn-based RPG with clearly a lot of somewhat hidden systems going on in the background (not unlike instantly filling invisible ATB gauges) made things feel a lot more malleable.
I've ranted extensively to mostly nobody about how much I've grown to dislike the ATB gauge over the years. Putting time-based pressure on my turns (when I prefer having all the time I'd like to make sure I'm making the correct decisions), while also wasting my time between turns where all I can do is sit and wait.
And also on the same token why I think MARDEK tackled turn-based RPG battles in a much more engaging way than most (it's not alone in this, but still rather rare) where the ATB gauge wastes your time where you aren't in control (watching animations, waiting for gauges to fill) while putting pressure on you when you are in control, which feels to me like it's trying to put more action and engagement into the areas that are already engaging (and instead losing some of the enjoyment of taking your time), instead MARDEK allows you as much time as you need (and information too, there's no Scan, you can check any time the stats and resistances of everything!) but fills the empty waiting of watching animations with the reaction system. You're always engaged (even if in a rather simple manner) so even grinding usually doesn't have you looking away and mashing buttons.
I also really appreciated the really detailed turn-order displays that FFX used to not only let you plan long in advance but also see the effects it would have if you used something slower or faster.
I really love turn-order displays in general, and I liked that MARDEK had one, even if it was a mostly unchanging loop outside of deaths and haste.
I'd be really excited to see the new MARDEK employ a similar system of extreme transparency in who gets to go when. It just feels more fair and it feels like it rewards you more for better strategising.
I'd have to see how the connection between health and damage output plays out, though. Maybe if its impact is less extreme than I'm envisioning, I dunno. I'm still a little iffy on the concept but I haven't played it, so I'll have to wait and see.
Edit: On the topic of a huge variety of food with fairly insignificant effects, I'm reminded of Terraria which had a massive list of painful-to-make potions that were not at all worth making for general use, that the game essentially still forced you into maximising the use of simply because the bosses were so extreme that you needed every small advantage you could get. Which was both good and bad, I liked the level of depth it provided and that it managed to get me to use them even though I hated it, but at the same time it doesn't change the fact that I hated doing it.
I've written very lengthy explanations of all the things that I loved about MARDEK, gameplay-wise, that put it above all other RPGs I've played, and why I consider MARDEK chapter 2 to be one of the most delightfully designed RPGs ever. Unfortunately that was on the last version of Fig Hunter, which I think is gone now.
Also I very strongly agree with the sentiment that each stat should be worthwhile, and I like being in control of it. I always love when increasing a stat by 1 is a noteworthy difference, and a choice that I made.
In a sense, a lot of MARDEK was a balancing act with your stats, and each thing being so valuable is what made this so engaging. Elemental resistances were extremely important and I liked how the story and gameplay aspects of it combined to make it clearly a core part of the universe, but you also could never fully focus on your elemental resistances without neglecting other stats.
Overall the system described in the post seems interesting and I want to see how it develops, there's only two things I read that I have some concern with.
Firstly the idea of each character having a preferred food is interesting and helps with character building, but I do worry that it might just be a bit inconvenient if it's too complex. This is a conversation I had recently with other people I know who are making RPGs. I just hope such a system of favourites is very straightforward.
I'd seen people planning to have each individual food item have some varying levels of interest in it that would change how effective it is, but that personally doesn't sound fun at all to manage. Like trying to feed a picky family that just so happens to have an RPG tacked on. Seems unnecessary to me.
To me it'd be a lot more reasonable to have very clearly defined favourite food groups that they either like or don't, that way it's not hard to think about whether they might like it or not, while still keeping the positive aspects of the system. That's possibly what you already had in mind though, not saying that it can't work and you'd be making a mistake, just bringing up a concern.
And secondly I personally don't find the idea of a character being weakened by low health to be appealing. While it makes sense as far as realism goes, I think it would make things quite a bit less engaging.
The option of trying to make a last ditch effort to win a battle even though you're rather weak, or putting off healing for a bit to do other things and the excitement of effectively making a comeback or taking a risk and it paying off seems like it'd be lost. You'd probably just have to constantly keep healing all the time.
Maybe it could work out with some experimentation, but it feels off to me.
Despite that, I look forward to where things go, and I'm glad it seems you're enjoying yourself with it.
There are six food groups, in two sets of three: Meat, "Bread", and Greens all healthy foods that restore Body; Chocolate, Savoury, and Cake are all snacks that restore Mind. Characters like one from each group, dislike one, and feel neutral about the other.
So a character might like Cakes and Greens, but dislike Meat and Savoury snacks. Anything more complicated than that would just be irritating, I think!
Also, rather than having a bunch of food items with varied effects that you'd need a guide (or a Curry Dex...) to keep track of, I was thinking each of these food groups would have a limited number of items within it. So there might be small, medium, and heavy Meat food items, which restore progressively more of their respective stat but delay your next turn by more as well.
Usually food in RPGs is something I ignore, because there are so many different meals and they have such small effects (usually not even anything significant) that it never seems worth the bother. So the aim of this would be to be simple to understand and use, and, like with the stats, for every food item to be worth using.
I actually quite like having to restore health using these food items often! I'm one of those players who accumulates tons of items that I never use, and I like the idea of having it so you 'have' to use restoratives often rather than just stockpiling them. I think I might lessen the potency of healing magic for that reason; not to the point where it's irritatingly useless, but I don't want it to make the food items obsolete.
I can understand the thought about lower health meaning lower attack; at first I thought it might be unappealing too, and I was fully expecting a negative response to this because of that.
In my experience testing so far, though, I've found that it actually introduces different kinds of strategies and decision-making. With the familiar system, there's really only one bit of information to consider: "am I at low health? Should probably heal then". Here, you might consider whether it's worth eating quickly before an attack, or whether you're healthy enough to finish your opponent off.
It also affects how you choose targets. Consider a situation where you're against three opponents with 60 Body each, and you've got two characters who can each inflict 50 damage. If you have them both focus on one target to take it out, as you typically would in any other RPG, then two full-health opponents will get attacks in afterwards. However, if you attack two different targets, they'll both hit you at low health, and their attacks will do little - perhaps even nothing - and they might even knock themselves out in the process.
And remember, if you eat a small food item, you usually get your next turn immediately after, so that affects decisions too. You don't need to choose to heal or attack if you can do both. I've also added a 'food menu' button that lessens the amount of menu navigation you need to do, to make it as easy as possible.
From what you've described, this turn system reminds me a bit of FFX in that sense, which sounds really appealing to me. A turn-based RPG with clearly a lot of somewhat hidden systems going on in the background (not unlike instantly filling invisible ATB gauges) made things feel a lot more malleable.
I've ranted extensively to mostly nobody about how much I've grown to dislike the ATB gauge over the years. Putting time-based pressure on my turns (when I prefer having all the time I'd like to make sure I'm making the correct decisions), while also wasting my time between turns where all I can do is sit and wait.
And also on the same token why I think MARDEK tackled turn-based RPG battles in a much more engaging way than most (it's not alone in this, but still rather rare) where the ATB gauge wastes your time where you aren't in control (watching animations, waiting for gauges to fill) while putting pressure on you when you are in control, which feels to me like it's trying to put more action and engagement into the areas that are already engaging (and instead losing some of the enjoyment of taking your time), instead MARDEK allows you as much time as you need (and information too, there's no Scan, you can check any time the stats and resistances of everything!) but fills the empty waiting of watching animations with the reaction system. You're always engaged (even if in a rather simple manner) so even grinding usually doesn't have you looking away and mashing buttons.
I also really appreciated the really detailed turn-order displays that FFX used to not only let you plan long in advance but also see the effects it would have if you used something slower or faster.
I really love turn-order displays in general, and I liked that MARDEK had one, even if it was a mostly unchanging loop outside of deaths and haste.
I'd be really excited to see the new MARDEK employ a similar system of extreme transparency in who gets to go when. It just feels more fair and it feels like it rewards you more for better strategising.
I'd have to see how the connection between health and damage output plays out, though. Maybe if its impact is less extreme than I'm envisioning, I dunno. I'm still a little iffy on the concept but I haven't played it, so I'll have to wait and see.
Edit: On the topic of a huge variety of food with fairly insignificant effects, I'm reminded of Terraria which had a massive list of painful-to-make potions that were not at all worth making for general use, that the game essentially still forced you into maximising the use of simply because the bosses were so extreme that you needed every small advantage you could get. Which was both good and bad, I liked the level of depth it provided and that it managed to get me to use them even though I hated it, but at the same time it doesn't change the fact that I hated doing it.