RPG Difficulty

Final Fantasy 8 used the type of system you are describing, it it turned out that a lot of gamers found it to be a better strategy to NOT level up that to actually play the game the way it was meant, so I think there should be a minimum level for the bosses, but level should be adjusted automatically to challenge the player''s who do extra leveling.

I think the solution to this problem is clear. Some of us like to see our characters become the ulitmate power house, and then we can go out and destroy the weakling monsters with a nice 9999 hit. However, some of us see sitting around for a few hours holding the button down so we can make numbers dance around so we can finally progress in the story boring.

What game designers should do is incorporate strategy into the fights. And I don't mean a simple if you stand on higher ground, you do more damage or if you attack from the back or whatever like in Tactics Ogre or FF Tactics.

There are a few solutions to such a problem. First of all, don't make a command based game. Doing so limits the player's movement, and can get rather complex menu systems if the player is allowed to do a lot of stuff. Incorporate a system where the player actually controls the character. Like Zelda, or Secret of Mana. Sure these systems aren't perfect, but in Zelda, I never left a dungeon to look for more heart pieces when I couldn't beat an end guy. I would rethink my strategy, and eventually I could beat the guy. The fact is that Zelda is also a pretty basic game when it comes to strategy. You use an item in a certain way to do something to the end guy, revealing his weakness and so on. There could be a lot more strategy to end guys, and with direct control, the possibilities are endless.

Another option that I have yet to see incorporated is more involved spells. I'm going to use some of the folder Final Fantasies as an example, since I am familiar with them. When it came to end guys, none of the effect spells did anything. YOu couldn't blind the guy, couldn't slow him usually, couldn't stop him, and so on. When you fought an end guy, your only option for a wizard was to do a spell that did the most damage. Fire, Lit, Ice, so on. Well, I think this is dumb for two reasons. Of course, it encourages players to go out and level up until they can just tank through all monsters, end guys included. It also makes a large part of the wizard's arsenal useless. What would be interesting to see is a situation where all spells have a certain effect, and a wizard can develop a strategy of combination of spells to use. An example I would give for this is Magic. Sure the card game is dead, but it had an interesting aspect that I have never seen in a video game. The point in that game was to make a deck of cards where all of your cards complemented eachother. If you had a creature that needed a lot of weak creatures as upkeep, you would have tons of weak creatures in your deck as well, or maybe something that would produce weak creatures every turn.

I would like to see a game where wizards can combine spells, or cast them in a particuar order to create interesting effects on the monsters. Not only would this introduce more strategy to the fighting, but I'm sure players would love to combine spells, or cast them in different orders to see what does what.

A final thing would be to introuce spells and techinques where more than one person is invovled. FF2 had this with Palom and Porom, and Chrono Trigger had this with the dual and triple techniques, but again, these just did more damage. I'd like to see them do things that affect the monsters in various ways.

Edit: I'm sorry, Taiyou, but I think your suggestion of increasing the difficulty of monsters as players increase levels is horrible to say the least, at least if you are talking about the same monsters.. The idea of level ups is so that a player can actually see advancement. It's the carrot that intices a lot of players to play the game. So they can get their character powerful, and eventually be able to beat monsters that at one time they couldn't.

Hehehehe, this is just one thing that strikes me as a very poor idea. You got me thinking, what would weight lifting be like if the 45 lb. weight just kept getting heaver as I got stronger, or if things got more and more expensive at exactly the same rate as me getting raises or saving my money. People like advancement, and that's one of the main defining aspects of an RPG.

--Vic--

[edited by - Roof Top Pew Wee on November 29, 2002 3:49:43 PM]

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Original post by Taiyou
Final Fantasy 8 used the type of system you are describing, it it turned out that a lot of gamers found it to be a better strategy to NOT level up that to actually play the game the way it was meant, so I think there should be a minimum level for the bosses, but level should be adjusted automatically to challenge the player''s who do extra leveling.

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I agree with this post and I think there should be an upper limit for the bosses too, so that people who actually spend the extra time training their characters have at least SOME reward.


My Stuff : [ Whispers in Akarra (online rpg) || L33T WAR (multiplayer game) || The Asteroid Menace (another game) ]

I think I was just frustrated last night because I was playing Chrono Trigger and...

//MINOR SPOILERS(Like anyone here hasn''t played this yet)

I had just speed-gamed it all the way up to Magus, and suddenly I''m facing a boss with over 6000 HP, with my 3 characters(Frog, Chrono, Robo) who only have 300 +/- 50. To hurt him I only have 2 characters(Chrono/Robo) since Frog doesn''t have magic. Every time I hit him for ~150, he hits EVERYONE for ~150+. I don''t have enough healing/mana potions to keep it up, and so I very well might have to load an old game and sit around for an hour levelling in weak enemies just so I''ll be tough enough to actually hurt him.

Argh.

-Ryan "Run_The_Shadows"
-Run_The_Shadows@excite.com
-The Navidson Record! The best film you''ll never see!

ennemy strength = party level * difficulty, capped to MAX.

With that your ennemy won''t be too difficult to beat, and with the MAX setting you make sure weak monster stay weak and don''t become too powerfull.

It''s simple to do, especially for games using level systems, for games using skills only, you''ll need to take total skill points into account instead of level, which is pretty similar.



-* So many things to do, so little time to spend. *-

I like the idea of a max level too so that players who really go the extra mile get a reward. So, I guess a min and max dificuly should be put in place to keep the player playing the game the right way and to reward those who try harder.

I also agree with roof top in that effect spells should affect bosses. I''ve been playing through Final Fantasy 9, and it really annoys me that I can''t use any of my effect spells strategically to keep myself alive during boss fights. I also don''t like the way bosses "cheat" during fights. For example, in Final Fantasy 9, there is a move to take away the enemies MP. After I used this to remove all the bosses MP, he could still use all of his spells.

I also think that enemies should heal themselves more often and use effect magic to their advantage in fights. Very few enemies in the RPGs I have played heal themselves, and they certainly don''t heal themselves as frequently as players do, it''s as though they aren''t even trying to survive the fight. I know an enemy that frequently healed itself could be annoying and quite difficult, but it may be a good idea for some boss enemies, this way they would not require extreme amounts of HP, they just heal themselves the same way players do.

Enemies never use items either. They always have an inventory you can steal from or acquire after a fight, but they never use anything they have. To add some extra difficulty, enemies could make use of this.

I would like to add that the above suggestions could be put in a game in place of the standard "cheat ai". In most games, the enemies are substantially stronger than the player with outrageously large amounts of HP, MP, and immunity to status effects. If the enemies were able to do everything that a player could do, then these things would not be required to keep the enemy at an appropriate difficulty level.

Also, Roof top, I think you misunderstood my original post. I simply suggested that if the enemy''s difficulty is going to be calculated dynamically to offer high level players a challenge, then there should be at least a minimum difficulty so that other players have to play the game the way it was intended (by levelin a little and not running from every fight).

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Original post by Taiyou Enemies never use items either. They always have an inventory you can steal from or acquire after a fight, but they never use anything they have. To add some extra difficulty, enemies could make use of this.

I would like to add that the above suggestions could be put in a game in place of the standard "cheat ai". In most games, the enemies are substantially stronger than the player with outrageously large amounts of HP, MP, and immunity to status effects. If the enemies were able to do everything that a player could do, then these things would not be required to keep the enemy at an appropriate difficulty level.

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I absolutely agree with you here. Players get more powerful not merely by increasing in hitpoints and so forth, but also by gaining special items and abilities and making use of them. Enemies should have the same advantages.

Oh, and I also agree with your statement above that designers should allow players to strategize a lot more, and even to control their character directly in order to realistically dodge and attack and so on. Defense and attack ratings, etc. are ported directly from paper & dice games, where there's no way to directly control your character, because he's a figment of the group's imaginations -- CRPGs could allow for a more realistic combat experience in this particular area (although it would also rely more on the player's own reflexes, etc, thus defeating the fantasy of controlling an incredibly nimble character, especially when you're a bit clumsy, like me).

[edited by - irbrian on November 30, 2002 6:32:33 PM]

one idea is to make the game''s story progress based on how
much effort you''ve put into the game.
if you skip most fights and face all your bosses with minimal
strength, you''ll get a crappier ending than what you would have
gotten.

i dunno.. seems like if you make the game too easy, people
would just play through it just to see the ending and your
play-time is shot to hell.
and for those of you who think play-time is overrated, remember
this: the quicker you finish a game, the quicker you forget
about it (and if you''ve forgotten about it how can you recommend
it to your friends? )

-eldee
;another space monkey;
[ Forced Evolution Studios ]

Do NOT let Dr. Mario touch your genitals. He is not a real doctor!

Yeah, I''ve thought of the fact that in most video games the characters you control are really not very strong, but you can somehow kill beasts with 1000000 hp compared to your 8000. In most RPGs I can think of (notable exceptions: Tactics [FF/Ogre]) the characters would kill themselves in one hit easy, and the bosses do crap damage, but have insane HP. What the heck is up with that? I mean, boss = 1000000 hp, 1000 damage. player = 10000 hp, 25000 damage. etc.

Another thing is that characters are usually in parties while the bosses are alone. Which is also strange. Why wouldnt the boss have friends? If bosses teamed up, the player would be screwed.

So, I''d like to see a game with balanced bosses/players.

Yeah, if the bosses and players were balanced then games would be much more easily ported to multiplayer situations. This would also give the game a much larger number of play hours. This is something that Golden Sun for the GBA tested out and I think it worked rather well: Players could have a link battle against their friend''s in-game party. Now, this game''s bosses were not balanced to the players, but for some reason the link battles still fought out incredibly well.

In any case. If bosses were the same as other players, then the fights would still be hard, and battles against friends would also have the difficulty as though it were a boss battle for both players.

Well there are RPGs with good combat strategies. Like in Chrono Trigger, there were alot of boss where you had to destroy there guard before the boss or not, and the interaction with the enviromment was pretty good to. And there were alot of ennemys teamed up. About ennemys using items, in Mario RPG, one of the first boss uses a whole stash of items, wich is pretty nice because you feel like if he''s more <> and he looks more like a competitor. In the same game, theres a part where you fight agaisnt an other party where there''s a healer, a bomber, and you have to kill them in a precise order. So you can chose, or you train, slay monster till you are strong enought to kill them or you figure a strategy to kill them.

http://newgatetech.topcities.com/

Consider:

If you are in the position that you can decide the outcome of a battle before it starts (by scaling the strength of the enemy) then you are making battles meaningless. Unless there is a bit more depth to a battle, it is just part of the story with the player being forced to click on buttons.

Whether or not this is a bad thing is a different story. Some of the most popular games are full of insignificant decisions which seem meaningful. Take a look at solitaire and put together a game tree for it showing all the possible moves at any one time. You might start with a couple of different moves you can do, once you have done them, you turn over a new card which might open a new option, or it might not. If it does, then it is always taken as you want to get cards out of the pile and onto the table. The actual choices you make are very limited, but... what is the most played computer game world wide?

Trying is the first step towards failure.

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Original post by Neosmyle
In most RPGs I can think of (notable exceptions: Tactics [FF/Ogre]) the characters would kill themselves in one hit easy, and the bosses do crap damage, but have insane HP. What the heck is up with that? I mean, boss = 1000000 hp, 1000 damage. player = 10000 hp, 25000 damage. etc.

Another thing is that characters are usually in parties while the bosses are alone. Which is also strange. Why wouldnt the boss have friends? If bosses teamed up, the player would be screwed.

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Agree. I don''t find it fun when playing a game like this. This is one of the reason why I don''t like Japanese RPGs because all of them are like this (except zelda) ! It is the same old gameplay. I wonder if bosses even needed in RPG? OK, maybe some, but as long as it fits the story. I notice some RPG games just give you a gigantic monster came out of nowhere (this can be considered a boss). You defeat it after 4 out of 5 of your chars dead. It''s gone. NPCs don''t even know about that monster.

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My compiler generates one error message: "does not compile."

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Original post by Roof Top Pew Wee
Some of us like to see our characters become the ulitmate power house, and then we can go out and destroy the weakling monsters with a nice 9999 hit. However, some of us see sitting around for a few hours holding the button down so we can make numbers dance around so we can finally progress in the story boring.

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As soon as you offer 2 fundamentally different approaches to gameplay in a single game, you''re gonna have trouble with balance

I remember someone taunting me cos she had level 99 FF6 characters and mine were all 40 or 50 when I finished... something like that, anyway. I had to do enough mindless levelling anyway, so why I would want to do another 50 levels for the sake of it I do not know. Obviously some people enjoy that, but...

Assuming we''re talking about bosses here... perhaps the methods to be used for defeating them should come from hints or items found as part of following the plot. A certain minimum level of statistical advancement will be necessary to stand a chance, but the main thing should be ''knowing your enemy'' and applying your character(s) properly. Superfluous levelling-up could be viewed as a way of reducing the chance of you dying, but not necessarily making it easier to defeat the enemy - that will involve finding the weak spot.

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First of all, don''t make a command based game. Doing so limits the player''s movement, and can get rather complex menu systems if the player is allowed to do a lot of stuff. Incorporate a system where the player actually controls the character. Like Zelda, or Secret of Mana. Sure these systems aren''t perfect, but in Zelda, I never left a dungeon to look for more heart pieces when I couldn''t beat an end guy.

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The problem is that this starts to detract from the essence of what a lot of people look for in an RPG. I used to love some of the action-RPGs (anyone remember Golden Axe Warrior? Not Golden Axe, btw) but you''re just replacing one sort of tedium and/or required skill with another, generally.

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Another option that I have yet to see incorporated is more involved spells. I''m going to use some of the folder Final Fantasies as an example, since I am familiar with them. When it came to end guys, none of the effect spells did anything.

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Yeah. I''d like to see magic used in more combinations. There were some nice emergent effects that I saw in FF6 (such as needing to cast Reflect on some of your guys in order to bounce attack spells off them), and more along those lines would be nice, instead of just starting out with 10 different ways of dealing damage and having bosses get progressively immune to more and more of them.

[ MSVC Fixes | STL | SDL | Game AI | Sockets | C++ Faq Lite | Boost | Asking Questions | Organising code files | My stuff ]

I second Kylotan opinion, and I''ll even go further.
IMO bosses should be more like those in The Legend of Zelda series.

Different tactics you must deduce from the boss, or get infos about during the game.

I also think magic should be a way to AVOID battle.

But when a battle occur, it should be a dramatic event, and I''ll recommend Grandia 2 battle system.
It''s involve planning, strategy and some nerves too.
(Describing it would be rather long, but I''ll try if anyone is interested, Grandia 2 is available on PC, Dreamcast and PS2.)

I don''t think a minimal level should be put at all, my equation is really the best IMO.

Last point: do not EVER make a murder based experience point system, murder should never be rewarded.

-* So many things to do, so little time to spend. *-

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Original post by Roof Top Pew Wee
An example I would give for this is Magic. Sure the card game is dead
[edited by - Roof Top Pew Wee on November 29, 2002 3:49:43 PM]

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Point of fact: I met a guy a couple of months ago who supports himself by entering Magic tournaments and selling the cards he gets as prizes. The card game is far from dead.

Just to get back on topic: one thing I''ve noticed increasingly with the Final Fantasy games as I play more of them is that most times, fights are just formalities that take up time rather than a meaningful opportunity to practise playing skills: in a lot of cases my actions either don''t affect the outcome of the fight (a monster you can''t beat, you can''t beat; a monster you can walk all over won''t do you noticeable damage even if you do nothing for a few rounds) or are clearly the wrong choice (this may not be true for beginners). So, for example, facing a moderately challenging (at current level) boss, my only real choices are when to heal against when to draw magic/steal items/attack depending on what the boss has worth getting. The choice of attack method is generally dictated by which party member''s turn it is (FFX changes this slightly by allowing party members to switch in and out, but once everyone has had a turn to get the experience, the choice of party members is essentially just a choice of attack method) and generally it''s clear which attack method to use in any given circumstance. The actual decisions that affect the outcome of the fight are generally taken on the equipment screens etc between fights, and when deciding whether or not to do what my friends call "mincing" - in FF games run around in small circles somewhere where random encounters show up simply in order to gain experience/items/magic and enhance character survival against the next boss.

Personally, I would prefer for there to be more of a skill element in the individual fights - as in Zelda (which IMO isn''t an RPG but an adventure game since rather than skills, you have abilities based solely on which items you carry/equip. OK, hearts increase, and so does magic meter, but again, that''s by scripted items rather than any generic training effects). Pen and paper RPGs have to use a very absract combat system simply because there''s no simple way of incorporating player actions as skills while in computer RPGs, it is at least possible if not easy. For example, in a pen and paper RPG, in deciding whether or not I hit someone when I use my longbow to attack, very few gaming groups will have access to a bow and archery range with which to determine the outcome, never mind what happens when you try simulating a longbow +3 with arrows +4 or whatever. In a computer game, it''s quite easy to implement a point and click archery system and even include variable accuracy by having a wobble (or a random factor at time of launch, though that tends to annoy players more). For example, Deus Ex (which IMO is an RPG since it did have an abstract experience system - that''s not the only thing I look for to decide whether something is or isn''t an RPG, but it''s a major factor) used player skill as a major outcome determinant in any firefight, but also incorporated character skill - weapon damage, range, reload time and wobbliness is determined by a combination of character skill in that weapon type and equipment modifications to the specific weapon. Also, in Deus Ex, experience was based solely upon exploration and puzzle solving rather than combat - in fact, most times combat was better avoided where possible since items dropped tended not to compensate for damage recieved and ammo expended. I ended up killing most enemies simply because I prefered to explore thoroughly, meaning they''d get in my way if I didn''t kill them, but where possible, I went for stealthy kills.

There's a lot to say here, so I'll be damned if I keep it brief.

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There are a few solutions to such a problem. First of all, don't make a command based game. Doing so limits the player's movement, and can get rather complex menu systems if the player is allowed to do a lot of stuff. Incorporate a system where the player actually controls the character. Like Zelda, or Secret of Mana. Sure these systems aren't perfect, but in Zelda, I never left a dungeon to look for more heart pieces when I couldn't beat an end guy. I would rethink my strategy, and eventually I could beat the guy. The fact is that Zelda is also a pretty basic game when it comes to strategy. You use an item in a certain way to do something to the end guy, revealing his weakness and so on. There could be a lot more strategy to end guys, and with direct control, the possibilities are endless.

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This is the direction in which RPGs need to go if they are to become more strategic games. I'll say more about this later. Until then, bear in mind that many non-action games, such as Baldur's Gate or FFX, involve quite a bit of strategy.

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I also think that enemies should heal themselves more often and use effect magic to their advantage in fights. Very few enemies in the RPGs I have played heal themselves, and they certainly don't heal themselves as frequently as players do, it's as though they aren't even trying to survive the fight. I know an enemy that frequently healed itself could be annoying and quite difficult, but it may be a good idea for some boss enemies, this way they would not require extreme amounts of HP, they just heal themselves the same way players do.

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I agree. All enemies should have an inventory which they can draw items from in the same manner that players do.

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An example I would give for this is Magic. Sure the card game is dead

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Err... I play Magic: TG, and so do most of my better friends. The game isn't dead, but it has gone far beyond fad status and can no longer be treated as other fad. Your local super-multi-market doesn't carry Magic cards anymore because they're not "cool" enough. This irritates me greatly, because Magic: TG still sells better in the U.S. than Yugi-Oh or, nowadays, Pokemon, and doesn't deserve to be confined to comic shops.

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I ended up killing most enemies simply because I prefered to explore thoroughly, meaning they'd get in my way if I didn't kill them, but where possible, I went for stealthy kills.

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This is exactly how I played Deus Ex. The trade-off in terms of peace of mind (knowing where everything is) is well worth the trail of bodies you leave behind, and is far more interesting than any XP reward.
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People get sick of me using my own ideas as examples, but they're usually good ones, so you'll have to bear with me for a while.

I'm currently working on a tactical-action-RPG called Pentaverse. Pentaverse is a tactical RPG (like FFT, Ogre Battle, etc.), but you always control at least one character directly, in a manner quite similar to Secret of Mana/SOM2. The game is, of course, NOT turn-based, and party size varies from one to sixty characters depending on player preference and troop availablity. Handling XP for such a potentially massive system is rather difficult and runs the risk of becoming boring, so I've worked up a semi-unique little system of my own:

XP gaining
The murder system doesn't work in a tactical RPG of this kind, because XP gains in a murder system are based on who "helped" kill what monster. It's rather difficult to determine what exactly it means for one to "help" in a battle system that is essentially a very well-controlled free-for-all. For example, if you send an archer or a team of archers away from the main group to pick off the enemy mass-healer who is making the enemy knights unkillable, they will miss the XP that they should get for making it possible for your warriors to kill those knights. On the other hand, without your own warriors holding the knights in place, the archers would never have reached the healer. They would have been attacked by the knights, you see. Therefore, your warriors deserve partial credit for killing off the cleric, as they made it possible.

Now, to make this even more of a mess, I'm going to switch sides. For the sake of argument, let's make the archers nonexistent for the moment. This means that the warriors are most likely obliterated by the knights, who are backed up their healer. This is all well and good, except that their humble cleric gets NO experience, even though she was the primary factor in destroying the warriors! This is supremely unfair, and penalizes the use of healers. In a game where one's party can be split into groups without any sort of arbitrary "party formation" screen, the murder system is definitely outdated.

Obviously, any action involved with a character who affects the slain enemy in any way should be considered a "kill share"-worthy action. Through this system, healing the healer who healed someone who took a bit of damage from a goblin who was later slain by another ally would earn you a full share of XP. And why not? Healing is just as fruitful an activity as attackin is, right?

Another aspect of the murder system that bothers me is that it precludes characters from learning skills through experience. Since you won't always use ALL of your troops in every battle, shoultdn't troops ordered to stand back and observe the battle gain a smaller amount of XP? Through this method, a group of first-level troops watching you fight an high-level evil overlord one-on-one in mortal combat would gain experience by watching the fight.

Another problem with the standard systems is that almost none of them, save for certain Square and those based on P&P RPGs, allow for multiclassing and diversification of limited skills. This is an outrage. Characters should not have to speciallize in a single school of skills for their entire lives, nor should they be allowed to choose from a diverse set of skills and spells with no penalties. My system allows the player to specify up to four classes being currently raised for each character. That character gains CP (class points) in the specified classes each time he or she gains a character level. 12 CP are gained per level, split evenly among all "equipped" classes. When any individual class's CP total reaches 12, the character gains a class level in that class, raising HP, etc., according to that classes standards, plus a number of skill points.

Skill points are the real core of the system. They can be used to purchase a skill, improve that skill further, or, once a certain degree of ability has been attained with that skill, to improve one's ability to teach that skill to others (resulting in reduced skill point costs). Also, once a skill has been mastered to a certain extent, the character gets a permanent skill bonus with all directly related skills. The unique part of this system is that, while ALL skills to are tied to a certain related class, all skills can be purchased regardless of whether one has levels in that class. For example, upon gaining a paladin class level, one gains 2500 SP for the sole purpose of purchasing paladin-specific skills, 2500 SP for cleric skills, 2500 SP for fighter skills, and 2500 "free" SP that can be spent upon the skills of ANY class, including the ones mentioned above.

That's all that I can think of now. There's probably more, but you don't want to hear it.

EDIT: Sh*t!! I forgot which thread I was replying to and replied to the alternative XP system by accident! Oh well, some of it's still relevant.

"Ph'nglui mglw'nafh Cthulhu R'lyeh wgah'nagl fhtagn!" - mad cultist, in passing

[edited by - DuranStrife on December 6, 2002 11:18:40 AM]

So, let''s recap:

1. People don''t like having to level up for hours and hours to beat some bosses.

2. Other people think it''s important for a character to grow meaningfully before continuing on.

3. Some people like to face bosses with strategy and cunning on the part of the player, rather than having a "cunning" attribute for the character and settling it with a dice roll.

4. Other people think that the whole point of an RPG is to relegate the player to a supervisory role and let the characters settle their differences based on their attributes.

5. It''s generally agreed that no role playing system can accurately reflect the thought and tactics that goes into real conflict.

6. It''s also agreed that no single style of gameplay can satisfy all of the people all of the time.

7. This thread has totally morphed into a discussion about XP systems.

Now, my responses:

To the RPG difficulty topic: Wouldn''t a variable gameplay style be the logical choice? I''m trying very hard to remember the battle system from Star Ocean 2. Anyone remember how it worked? I seem to remember there being a choice between real-time running and chopping and turn-based menu-manipulating strategizing. That seems like it might be viable. It allows action fans to use their own manual dexterity and hand-eye coordination to make their characters perform better than their stats alone would allow, and it also lets people build up their characters until they can take care of themselves.

To the XP topic: Start a new thread and talk about it there.

Ah. I haven''t gotten around to getting Star Ocean 2 yet, but I''ve played the original SNES Star Ocean, which has almost the same battle system. This is indeed a great game series. I never ran into a Star Ocean boss that couldn''t be beat by coming back to it with a different strategy. (i.e. bring out four fighters and attack from four different sides while taking control of the front fighter to better have him avoid the boss''s heavy attacks, etc., etc.) This whole system of combat is ideal, except that I, for one, would prefer controls that are closer to those of Secret of Mana. Thus my idea for Pentaverse''s combat system. (sort of described above)