Dev Diary - Entry 9, 12th Mar. 2018

CAUTION: Spoilers will abound in this dev diary regarding Final Fantasy XX/Final Fantasy 20XX. If you believe yourself to be involved in playing this game, please exercise due caution. Or, if you feel pushed to your limit, I guess you could try to break them, but, y'know. I doubt it'd really help.
Hey all! How's your week been? I'll admit, there's been something that's been a hefty distraction this weekend - a small thing called the Return to Yarnham, which is an annual Blooborne event that encourages player interaction. It's been a ride.
That said, you're not here for my witterings about my weekend - you're here for my witterings about the rest of the week! For this, I would refer you to the page referring to Sarah, one of the planned NPCs for my intrepid party of two. Page is here, and I apologize for the poor formatting - I swear, it looked a lot better when each individual level had it's own line: https://www.worldanvil.com/w/final-fantasy-20xx---vaste-year-1162-Kaiser6012/a/sarah-unit-arebaah-assar-article?preview=1
But that's not what we're talking about - what should be interesting should be the (currently unfinished) last section, where I describe the planned limit breaks for it (yes, it. Though it's name is feminine, it distinctly identifies as agendered. All planned appearances of other bots of this type will also show that they are all identical - woo, foreshadowing!) That's right, I'm trying to craft limit breaks for my game. As such, I decided that this week, it'd be interesting to talk a bit about what I see Limit Breaks being all about.
So, let's talk broken Limits... or Desperation Attacks... or Trance, or Overdrive, or Armiger... There's been a few over the years. First, a small history reminder.
The first known occurance of anything identifiable as Limit Breaks was in FF6. Called Desperation Attacks, these were almost entirely random occurring variations of the standard "Fight" command. They only occurred if a character was in critical condition, and you'd be lucky if you saw two or three in the game if you weren't trying specifically to achieve it. That said, each character had a unique Desperation Attack, which helps go towards differentiating each character, and in a slightly more meta example, this is the interesting debut (as far as I'm aware) of the concept of the Triple Star.
The trend seemed to be popular, because while in FF6 the Desperation Attack seemed a very ancilliary extra (being buried in amongst a whole bundle of other mechanics), in 7 they were promoted to almost a selling point. Limit breaks got a major overhaul, and gained the classic name here too. In 7, limit breaks are attached to a meter - one didn't necessarily need to be in critical health here, though the amount of damage you need to take to get it would probably mean that you'd be in bad shape when you got to use it. Increased, too, were the number that people got - anywhere from two to a staggering seven - and there were even status effects that messed specifically with how quickly you earned limit. Crazy stuff.
From here, it was more fine tuning than anything else. Limit breaks were here to stay, it seemed. In 8, one could theoretically chain together limit breaks all day, given the PC in question was in a sufficient state of Crisis. 9's Trance system is rather similar in means of activation to 7, though the Trance lasts multiple rounds and more subtly changes features about the PCs (and *SPOILERS*, as well), such as Zidane's Thief Arts into Dyne Skills and gifting the mages the ever-powerful Double or W-Magic command. 10 returned to the single-attack style similar to 7 and 8, but gifted the PCs with multiple ways of earning Overdrive, as it was known. 12 tied the "limit break" style mechanic to the magic system, and only allows this when all character's magic gauges were full. 13 combines limit breaks with summons into the Gestalt Mode, which resembles nothing more (at least to me) than Zell's Duel limit break. 15 has a pseudo limit break in the Armiger mode, that simply builds as Noctis deals damage.
So, what's similar? What's different? And what purpose do each of these mechanics serve, so as to inform what role they should serve in mine? Well, for the most part, limit breaks are character specific, which serves to define the characters more (especially in games where the mechanics end up rendering the characters very similar... Lookin' at you, 7 and 8.). Mechanically, they're somewhere between a comeback mechanic and a semi-uncontrollable super-move - there to provide that little bit of extra power to break stalemates when the party is just surviving against particularly strong opponents like bosses.
So, how to do? Well, given that a round includes three turns, having one super-move seems to me to be a waste of potential. Plus, having one big attack gets kind of boring after a while - there's not much chance for play and counter-play with that. I very much enjoy the Trance system from 9 for this, so this has been my model for the FFXX Limit Break system.
Mechanically, my idea is this: Limit breaks are unique to each character, and each character gets four. They start with one, and earn another every fifteen levels. Each limit break last for a single phase per level of the associated element and is activated as a free action, unless external circumstances modify this (Rage might force people to use their limit break immediately upon reaching it, while Sadness might make activating limit breaks an action. Still not quite sure how I'm gonna play this.) Limit breaks are activated with Limit Points (LP). Every time a player takes damage, they gain a commensurate amount of LP. If they heal outside of combat, 75% of healed HP are subtracted from LP. Otherwise, the healed person loses LP equal to 25% of the healed amount. The amount of LP you need to activate a limit break is equal to 150% of your total HP. If you possess any more than 100% of your total HP in LP, it is reduced down to 100% of HP.
So, that's my ideas for Limit Breaks. We also have an (almost) completely designed character - let me know if this looks utterly unplayable or not. Until next week, all! More map design, I'm thinking, as well as more character design.
Adieu, mon ami!