Indivisible: Lab Zero's Action-RPG! (General Discussion)

[Demifiend]

I want secret boss fights, one of my favorite parts in any videogame is fighting secret bosses, i love them, i love them all, any secret boss fight with a different moveset and strategy than any normal boss would be appreciated.

 

[Zidiane]

The secret boss is you, the player, and you defeat him or her by getting better at the game.

 

[Mike_Z]

Quick question about the playable prototype:
Will it be available on multiple platforms (mac and linux), or just PC?

Don't know yet, is the best I can say. Skullgirls now runs on Linux/Mac (proven in person at Evo, woo!) but I have never compiled anything for either platform, and don't have the capability to do so myself. So I'd like to, but it highly depends on outside factors. :^S

The more I hear about this, the more I can't wait to get that demo.

"Prototype". :^) And don't assume that'll have anything to level, yo, since we're doing it in a very short timeframe (AND still fixing SG. Sigh.)

 

[Demifiend]

Don't know yet, is the best I can say. Skullgirls now runs on Linux/Mac (proven in person at Evo, woo!) but I have never compiled anything for either platform, and don't have the capability to do so myself. So I'd like to, but it highly depends on outside factors. :^S


"Prototype". :^) And don't assume that'll have anything to level, yo, since we're doing it in a very short timeframe (AND still fixing SG. Sigh.)

Just a little stupid question, Are weapons going to be sold in shops?, like, most rpg's, or will you do it a la Mystic Quest, where every weapon is on treasures or hidden somewhere in the game, for curiosity!

 

[Mike_Z]

Just a little stupid question, Are weapons going to be sold in shops?, like, most rpg's, or will you do it a la Mystic Quest, where every weapon is on treasures or hidden somewhere in the game, for curiosity!

...not...sold in shops...

 

[ArgonBern]

...not...sold in shops...

thANK GOODNESS I generally hate buying weapons or other equips. Maybe it's just people like you and me but I just feel soo cheap doing so most times.

 

[Ktulu]

...not...sold in shops...

Can we take this to mean no shops at all?

 

[Sotherius]

I think is most safe to assume that some things are not meant to be known yet.

Spoiler

We will have some stuff similar to the shinespark? and it will be usable in combat?

 

[Kai]

Buying equipment in shops has always been a pain in my ass. It's a matter of having a certain amount of gold, so it ends up being either:

1. time wasting due to grinding, because the game didn't give you enough gold via normal gameplay and exploration, so you've got to run around looking for gold slimes or some shit.
   
2. time wasting due to errand running, because the game did give you enough gold via normal gameplay, but then adds the extra chore of sending us to the store. If you're gonna design the game to guarantee I acquire the necessary gold to purchase gear, why not just give me the gear directly, instead of that gold?

 

[Denizen]

I trust Lab Zero avoid the old and outdated traditions of JRPGs that only existed to make boring games long and addicting.

 

[IsaVulpes]

If you're gonna design the game to guarantee I acquire the necessary gold to purchase gear, why not just give me the gear directly, instead of that gold?

Because buying allows me a degree of customization?

I can choose, based on how I like to play and how good I am, what I am gonna do..
eg whether I buy a small item to buff my HP every time I can, or trust in my ability to get through the first few dungeons on beginner equip and then spend a large batch of money on endgame equip which I thus can acquire much earlier than otherwise.
In a Zelda type game, I can't go "wtf I don't give a shit about the Hammer, give me the Hookshot instead you shitty dungeon!"; it forces me to progress like it wants me to.
With shops and multiple pathways, one guy is gonna buy bombs and blow a hole in a wall, another guy is going to buy a rope and climb the wall, a third guy will buy a bird and fly over it, and a fourth guy can buy a boat and sail around. That's neat?

Both versions certainly work and have their advantages.

 

[Meow-Professor]

I feel like I am the only person who likes item shops.
It feels rewarding to me, taking the money I've earned to buy what I've been grinding for. I also like having the choice of what I spend money on, and I like the money managing aspect of it.

 

[The Dave]

I feel like I am the only person who likes item shops.
It feels rewarding to me, taking the money I've earned to buy what I've been grinding for. I also like having the choice of what I spend money on, and I like the money managing aspect of it.

What's this about equipment? I mostly like stocking up on health potions... :P

 

[Kai]

Because buying allows me a degree of customization?

I can choose, based on how I like to play and how good I am, what I am gonna do..
eg whether I buy a small item to buff my HP every time I can, or trust in my ability to get through the first few dungeons on beginenr equip and then spend a large batch of money on endgame equip which I thus can acquire much earlier than otherwise.
In a Zelda type game, I can't go "wtf I don't give a shit about the Hammer, give me the Hookshot instead you shitty dungeon!"; it forces me to progress like it wants me to.
With shops and multiple pathways, one guy is gonna buy bombs and blow a hole in a wall, another guy is going to buy a rope and climb the wall, a third guy will buy a bird and fly over it, and a fourth guy can buy a boat and sail around. That's neat?

Both versions certainly work and have their advantages.

What RPG (or metroidvania) are you talking about? I don't remember any RPGs treating equipment purchasing like what you're describing. The most customization I've ever seen from items in an RPG is to lean your stats slightly in one way or the the other (e.g. higher attack with lower defense).

What's this about equipment? I mostly like stocking up on health potions... :P

Having to use gold to replenish them, though, is lame. I like how some recent RPGs have been treating potions: and automatically refilling stock of potions that you can only use a set amount of per battle. Prevents the old, "never used my megalixer because it was to valuable," problem. Even Witcher 3 used a variation of this, where your stock of potions would get a top up after you rested. Made things a lot more enjoyable than running back to a shop every 20 minutes.

 

[Denizen]

I like how some recent RPGs have been treating potions: and automatically refilling stock of potions that you can only use a set amount of per battle.

GOOD
STUFF

 

[tekkaxe]

@Kai
I feel like a lot of what you express is a matter of implementation, rather than a failing of shops themselves, which is cool because with a new project comes the opportunity to address flawed implementation and make shops that are actually worthwhile.

If shops along the way offered consumables that were useful (and circumvented the megalixer dilemma you talk about); and in the case of gear, if gear upgrades weren't simply a matter of "all your old crap is now obsolete" but instead offered an opportunity for strategy and decision-making via various enhancements/addons/bonuses; and if the prices were at a good spot compared to the potential to earn... I don't imagine that'd negatively affect the experience.

Especially in the case of consumables- they usually suck because a game does them generically, and the inventory system is a generic one. It's just like you talk about: there's stuff that's 'too good to use', or we buy 99 of item-x every time it falls below x-threshold.

But what do I mean by generic? Stuff like "we've got the tiny healing item, then the medium healing item, then the huge healing item! Then the item that heals for 9999nine-nine-nine hp! Then the item that removes poison, but then the item that removes ALL of the bad things!" Like, yeah... but it really doesn't have to be that at all.

It just takes some consideration, and willingness to not just have a classic RPG thing simply because it's a classic RPG thing.

Dragon's Crown is one example of a game that makes items and gear worth it though. I'm sure there are many others.

Spoiler

In DC, you can buy items from the town shop (though the inventory changes from time to time, which I don't feel too great about).

First, all items in the shop have the following elements: amount (amount of uses per adventure), and restock amount (amount of times your "amount of uses" will be topped off when you return to town, before your item vanishes into the ether. If you don't use the item while on adventure, top-offs wont be consumed).

Next, items usually have 3 degrees of potency, but the amount of uses, and the restock amount are usually greater with the lower potency. That makes every item useful, while providing the comfort of knowing "hey, at least it'll be topped off a couple times".

Lastly, they went beyond the basic "heal hp"/"heal mp"/"remove status fx" items. There are various degrees of attack items, items that buff knockback, damage dealt, sturdiness, pump up item drops during a run... Heck, why not have a few things on hand and pop them as needed during a dungeon run.

Then, there are ways to heal outside of consumables, freeing you up to not rely so heavily on potions. But then things are balanced because your inventory for things you can have active, between actual equipment and consumable items, is a fixed number. So you've got to decide whether to use that valuable inventory space on items, or backup gear for various situations/durability sake...

And though you don't get gear from the shop, the game makes gear useful by having benefits beyond "attack power up". There's stuff that makes it easier to score knockdowns, stuff that increases the value of cash picked up, stuff that decreases specific elemental damage, Stuff that increases efficacy toward specific species... So cool, take the sword that hits really hard if you want... or take the sword that heals you every time you stab a guy.

</rambling on about dragon's crown>...

 

[Kai]

DC also relies on an XP grind, which has already been revealed to not be the plan for Indivisble. A lot of the positives of DC's shop system are lost if XP is no longer a factor in how combat effective you are.

Mike's comments lead me to believe that player, "leveling," will happen in the same manner as Super Metroid. Not grinding, but finding. A shop selling gear doesn't really have a place in that system. It just doesn't sound like it to me, anyway.

 

[tekkaxe]

A lot of the positives of DC's shop system are lost if XP is no longer a factor in how combat effective you are.

Yes, DC has leveling, but it's far more a gear-based game than a leveling-based game.

DC uses leveling more as a means of controlling access to gear and providing access to different difficulty tiers, rather than simply a means to overcome challenge by out-leveling it. Some support for that line of thinking is that:
-the various difficulties are capped at various levels. You cannot level up beyond the cap for that difficulty.
-But, if you have a character that is above the level cap for the present difficulty, your stats are scaled to fit. You are still stronger to whatever degree, but not in the "planetary annihilation" sense that we get from other RPGs where you level-up to win.
-Stat gains via leveling are of significantly lesser importance. Gains extremely small and sparse (like, you might get +1 strength for your sword guy like, once in 3 levelups, and a point in luck and int somewhere in between)
-The efficacy of gear dwarfs whatever you can accomplish through merely leveling, encouraging players to play around with gear. You might have a weapon that pumps up damage %50, but then another weapon that flatout adds X-amount strength to your person while it's equipped. Then, consider that gear can have 1 to 7-ish different modifiers on it, and at that point, grinding XP just to get stronger is hardly worth even being an afterthought- especially when at end game, you have nothing really restricting you from using whatever gear you wish.

And that's just the gear side. I already talked about the item side, and how it makes consumables useful through a mix of stocks, restocks, and well-thought-out effects, none of which are affected by whether or not you level up, or that the game allows experience points.

But let's ignore stat gains through leveling up and for argument's sake, say that the character in 'Under-Development Indie RPG' was at base stats forever. A consumable that lets me hit harder for 60 seconds, or a piece of gear that makes skeletons hit me less hard, or a trinket that gives me another stock of my fancy-move... those things can be useful, depending on the game. And such is the case with Dragon's Crown.

But let's look at Indivisible specifically: there's so much we don't know about systems, gear, combat, exploration items... that it's rather bold to definitively say that buying gear has no place in a game like that. It's more a matter of figuring out what gear makes sense (and whether or not you want gear in the game anyway), and what consumable items make sense.

For example, let's say that game has 'story-based traversal shoryuken move' thanks to finding some artifact during the adventure. Some possible item-based, or gear-based, modifications can be: now it's on fire, doing multiple hits on the way up; Now it's electricity and puts folks in a brief stun; Now it's armored for 1 or 2 hits; Now dollar-bills rain down around you when you land; Or maybe it just does flat-out %X higher damage, with Y-tradeoff.

It's a matter of approach. If I had to pick a tldr, it would be that shops and gear don't have to suck, and while not absolutely necessary, they can still be worked to fit a variety of game contexts if so desired.

 

[Squire Grooktook]

I feel like I am the only person who likes item shops.
It feels rewarding to me, taking the money I've earned to buy what I've been grinding for. I also like having the choice of what I spend money on, and I like the money managing aspect of it.

I like item shops. In fact, I love resource management in general. Heightens the feeling of adventure when you use your time in safe zones to prepare for the dangerous uncharted territory you'll be trekking through.

 

[Mike_Z]

It's a matter of approach. If I had to pick a tldr, it would be that shops and gear don't have to suck, and while not absolutely necessary, they can still be worked to fit a variety of game contexts if so desired.

I'm gonna say a divisive thing here, which is that given the choice between a variety of options, there is a BEST one. And there is sometimes a local-maximum BEST and a global-maximum BEST, but that's generally either not the case or not important because the local-maximum BEST is good enough. In a single-player game where you can reload any time you want to, the number of people who will spend limited resources on Find Trap vs Guts/Counter/First Aid is pretty small.

To use a real example, look at Val's orange vial. Giant amounts of input lag are amazing, and combining them with a snap is even better! But when you can choose the more immediate EXTRA DAMAGE instead, pretty much nobody uses orange (or green). Meta benefits are very often skipped in favor of immediate practical benefits, unless they turn out to provide immense practical benefits like say Calculator. Comparing to MODOK, who can scramble your inputs and doesn't have to choose, that gets used more often (but still not super often!). The benefit is greater to the point of actually being kinda busted, and there is no real other choice, and plenty of people STILL don't use it!

I've played a lot of games that give you the choice between Damage and something, or Defense and something, and in the short term Damage or Defense always wins out unless the game FORCES you to pick the Something because the next boss uses all light-based attacks or whatever and you MUST choose it to survive.

I have other problems with shops, and with having a limited inventory of say basic healing items, but I won't go into those now.

 

[Squire Grooktook]

In a single-player game where you can reload any time you want to, the number of people who will spend limited resources on Find Trap vs Guts/Counter/First Aid is pretty small.

If traps are randomized, and the last checkpoint is farther away, I could see Find Trap being very useful.

I think a situation in which there are legitimate choices on what kind of problems you want to prepare for and what you want to leave to your own skill/luck, but obviously it requires a lot of balancing and thought to make sure nothing gets left in the duest.

 

[Mike_Z]

If traps are randomized, and the last checkpoint is farther away, I could see Find Trap being very useful.

Except you could buff your defense until the traps didn't matter, and it would also protect you from enemies.

 

[Squire Grooktook]

Except you could buff your defense until the traps didn't matter, and it would also protect you from enemies.

What if the traps poisoned you, and poison damage was based on x percent of total hp per y number of turns/seconds?

You could buy antidote instead, but maybe trap detection costs less and has more uses or other utilities.

I think you can, theoretically balance anything. It's more an issue of whether it's important enough to the experience to justify all the time and effort.

 

[Mike_Z]

I think you can, theoretically balance anything. It's more an issue of whether it's important enough to the experience to justify all the time and effort.

It also means you'd have to use traps throughout the entire game to justify the decision to make speccing to avoid them worthwhile, which is often not desirable, whereas attack and defense always apply.
Plus, in order for Find Trap to be justified they'd have to be random AND undetectable otherwise, which just makes it a frustrating play experience.

Anyway, my point is: me? Not gonna do that crap. I prefer machine-gun-where-you-can-fly vs Polar-Star-where-you-can-get-all-the-rest-of-the-game choices, in that you are directly rewarded for choosing to make the game harder for yourself, when you get a choice at all.

Also thank you for another post to add to my "Why this game is going to be ivory tower development" list. :^P

 

[Squire Grooktook]

Oh, believe me, I'm not throwing out suggestions for this game (from what I've heard, I'm expecting something closer to the metroidvania style then the in depth rpg style, which is fine by me). Just kind of theory talking about shops in general, in rpg's or arpg influenced games.

Your original point was that there would always be a "best" option for you to choose. I think you could argue that, depending on the aim of the game, it could work. Either you could make it so that:

A) There is an objectively best option, but figuring out what the best option is, is part of the challenge/strategy/goal/fun.

or B) Depending on what you buy/build/use/etc. you get a different kind of challenge. IE by buying item set A you don't have as hard a time with X challenge, but you have to deal with Y challenge. Vice versa if you buy item set B.

Plus, in order for Find Trap to be justified they'd have to be random AND undetectable otherwise, which just makes it a frustrating play experience.

Well, you could make them possible to notice through skill, but still very threatening.

For example, Nippon Ichi's ClaDun X2 has lots of random floor panels in its dungeons that activate various traps (poison gas, slow movement curse, fire bomb, portal to harder dungeon, etc.) that are invisible until you get very close. Not a big deal when you're walking around normally, but it's an action rpg so if you get into a fight with monsters, it's very easy to accidentally step on one if your reflexes aren't sharp. So abilities or items that have the perk of making all traps visible are pretty useful.

Of course, in this game, as I understand it, fights are separate from exploration/movement (?), so that particular example is not relevant lol.

 

[Zidiane]

No (weapon) shops? I do enjoy finding my items and equipment. It'll be nice exploring and then discovering new and powerful weapons and equipment or what have you for my efforts (if that's what will be happening). I'm fine either way, but this way will probably be more interesting.

I think as far as shops go, having shops that sell abilities and consumables wouldn't be bad. If you're avoiding giving the player a definitive best item to buy (or, definitive highest damage/defense), giving them a bunch of smaller techniques they could buy that would gradually improve their fights or mobility or exploring capabilities would be nice. That is, if we aren't getting those things via gear or whatever we will be leveling up.

 

[PaperBag_Sniper]

I feel like I am the only person who likes item shops.
It feels rewarding to me, taking the money I've earned to buy what I've been grinding for. I also like having the choice of what I spend money on, and I like the money managing aspect of it.

I find shops are best when they function as restock areas and upgrade points. I play a lot of dungeon crawlers and, while you can find items in the dungeons themselves you won't be able to reliably stock your inventory with health potions/armor/weapons just off of item drops.

Granted by design, most dungeon Crawls rely on you making multiple trips in and out of the dungeon and use things like limited inventory slots, non-regenerating resources (health, mana, etc), and quest flagging to force you to leave. Not the case with Metroidvania games usually unless you're looking at a post SOTN castlevania game.

 

[KaboomKid]

I know this shop discussion is sort of a tangent, since it won't really apply to Indivisible, but I also like shops if they're handled well. I kinda like the illusion of an economy that they can represent to a game's world, especially when different parts of the world are allowed to specialize in different kinds of items. Plus, whenever you enter a new town where everyone's walking in circles, asking for favors, and speaking in cryptic one-liners, it's nice that you can usually depend on the shopkeep to do something practical for you.

Game specific, I like how shops are handled in games like Rogue Legacy or Vandal Hearts, where shop access is limited. Unless you perform well in the game, you usually have to make hard choices at the next shop to decide what upgrades you get. Every decision matters going into the next fight, so it adds some immediate weight to how you spend your money.

On the flipside, I can definitely understand where the shop hate comes from. Shopping in games like Faxanadu is horrible. Every shopkeeper in that game is a scumbag that price hikes the exact same services at each new town, and you have to grind for cash to stay ahead of the curve. If you're short on coins when you find an important shop on the far end of the map, that means it's time to whack the same nearby enemies for 30 minutes.

Thankfully, there are also games like Spelunky, where I can vent my frustrations against shopkeepers and still have fun at the same time!

 

[Cheesedragon]

Also thank you for another post to add to my "Why this game is going to be ivory tower development" list. :^P

Thank GOD! For SG it was painful but necessary but for a single player game this is how it should be!

 

[Master Chibi]

'I'm interested in this'

"HEEE HEE THANK YOU'

I'm interested in this'

'HEE HEE THANK YOU'

'I'm interested in this'

"HEEE HEE THANK YOU'

I'm interested in this'

'HEE HEE THANK YOU'

'I'm interested in this'

"HEEE HEE THANK YOU'

I'm interested in this'

'HEE HEE THANK YOU'


:|

 

[Mike_Z]

I will just say that you are all WAY off base when you make any statements regarding shops, because there's a central thing I can't say that basically means none of that works how you think it does.
:^)

Was that cryptic enough? Hahahahahahaaaa....

 

[Ktulu]

Microtransactions confirmed. :^)

 

[Zidiane]

... unorthodox shops? Hmm... No clue. Guess I'll just have to wait and see. Man... when's more info on plot and gameplay...

Can we get any word on the types of places we'll be visiting, or how? Is it all one big connected map like SM? Or maybe one big dungeon? There were floating island thingies in the trailer. Are we going to be traveling to different island thingies and exploring each individual place? In the trailer it looked like maybe two places, but it could also be the same forest-y place throughout.

 

[MysteriousJ]

Indivisible is a new action/RPG IP, starring Ajna (AHZH-na), a girl who sets out on a globe-spanning journey to discover the truth behind her mysterious powers.

 

[Mike_Z]

Is it all one big connected map like SM?

Aiming for big connected map like SM or Ori. We'll have to see if we can actually hit that.

 

[Fizzxwizz]

please tell me Chester is going to sell you the loot. Chester is the best.

 

[Master Chibi]

I'M GLAD SOME PEOPLE ARE NERDY ENOUGH TO UNDERSTAND MY POST K THX

 

[tekkaxe]

I'm gonna say a divisive thing here...

I can totally understand why you'd feel that way though.

In addition to the Valentine vial example, there are the countless RPGs in which a global/local best is just flat-out a thing, and there are scores of text docs on GameFAQS to back that up ("so the gear you wanna buy when you get to such-and-such town is..."; "Ignore item X, it's nowhere as useful as buying item Y"; etc...)

As I look back on the RPGs I've played, even the ones I enjoyed, there was often a falling short when it comes to gear/consumables... heck, even learned abilities: Why in the world would I ever bother using Fire1 again now that I have Fire2? Why buy poison-cures and silence-cures when I can just buy the item that cures everything?

But they're a nice, understandable, and easily digestible way to convey growth and accomplishment to the player, along with a pretense (in some cases) of strategy/customization. On the other hand, these elements can also effectively flavor a world in a specific way...

I'm more in love with the idea of what gear and items, leveling and skills represent, rather than the vast majority of the ways existing games have executed on those elements.

 

[Squire Grooktook]

Why in the world would I ever bother using Fire1 again now that I have Fire2? Why buy poison-cures and silence-cures when I can just buy the item that cures everything?

Although I'm not the biggest fan of it, there actually was a reason to use low level spells in the first Final Fantasy. Instead of a global MP stat, the game had a D&D style system of each tier of magic having a set number of "uses" per day (that is, until you rest in the next inn or whatever). You only get to use Fire 3 like 5 times, but you get to use Fire 1 30 times. So mages casting lower level magic when they didn't need to hit hard made sense.

 

[Zidiane]

Hmm... I decided to take a better look at the trailer and see if I noticed anything. Going to be talking about a lot of baseless things for no reason.

I was looking at the characters that appear alongside Ajna.

Spoiler

It looks like there are 10 in the first picture, and 3 in the second. Those 3 also appear about the same "Size" as Ajna, as the others sorta are in the background and are thus "smaller". They also appear in a flash of light where the others are blacked out at first before fading in. There's definitely a distinct line between the 3 and the 10. Maybe the 3 are teammates and the 10 are enemies? It having 3 allies and 10 enemies seems more likely than the other way around. There's also the fact that while the 10 look to be from all over the world, some from differing eras even, the 3 almost seem to go with Ajna, or at least aren't from so vastly different areas of the world. One is wearing a Tiger skin (Tigers are of course are from Southeast Asia), another seems to be wearing similar armlets to Ajna (Maybe they're from the same place?), and the archer looks like he may be Chinese (The type of fur coat and the armor look like they could be).

Someone probably mentioned how Ajna is connected to a third eye. And maybe this picture looks familiar.

Spoiler

Ajna is the 6th main chakra out of 7, it is the "Third Eye" and it means Command, or the authority to percieve. There are a bunch of other minor chakras too, and maybe those ones will appear as the names of abilities or weapons? Anyway, the sixth chakra is the chakra of consciousness, and is used to see both the inner and outer worlds (meaning seeing the world as it's presented and what it means, seeing the obvious world and the world beyond what is obvious). Sounds like potentially what's causing the two different "types" of forest we see during the preview?

Spoiler

That's all I got for now. Heh... It's kinda funny, my house has always had a lot of Hindu symbolism and Buddha and Shiva and Sarisvati statues. Never did I think that familiarity would come to me from a Lab Zero production.