[Discussion] Skill tree like idea

[Daruda]

Hi everyone!
I'm here to ask you people what do you think about my idea.
I'm in RMXP since long and I've just seen essentials pack, so I've been thinking to what implement in it.
And a Skill tree idea popped up, Where you can add moves, lv up, change ability, make a pokemon shiny, a shadow or purify it.
It's something not even so hard.
Ideas? Things that should be in there?
And what do you think I should use to swichthem on? Progress in the story, some sort of Exp or Skill point.

I'm trying to do a ring menu too, but it's going a little slowly...

 

[tImE]

Pokémon already has a skill tree. ...Sort of.
Effort Values are essentialy skill points that are assigned automatically by battling certain opponents, rather than manually at a level-up.
Changing this would make some really interesting gameplay, but I'm not sure if it would work for a regular Pokémon game.
This kind of thing would work better for a regular RPG, where you don't have as many characters and can focus on developing them to suit your needs.
Almost no one bothers EV-training a Pokémon in fan-games, since it doesn't really matter anyway, since the games AI is way too easy, compared to battling other people IRL, so putting a lot of effort into making a skill tree to replace an unimportant feature feels kind of like a waste of time.

HOWEVER, I think this kind of feature would fit perfectly for a more old-school RPG with Pokémon characters, or maybe a hack-n-slash with Pokémon in it.
Basically, a game where using these skillpoints actually makes sense.
Maybe tying moves into the skill trees, making Extremespeed an unlockable move by leveling in the Speed Skill tree, for example.

But like I said, I really doubt how good this would work in a regular-style Pokémon game. But if you want to try, go ahead! You might positively surprise both me and yourself!

 

[Daruda]

Thanks for your answer, really.
so, I was thinking what I could add to a game, I wanted something new and i come out with that...
Now I have a more solid idea.
I was thinking to do a game with shadow pokemons, so you won't get many pokemon in your team, so the skill thing should be of some use, I'll add a comand like "Darkness" on the menu (or maybe make a item) that warp me on the skill map, There I will be able to turn a pokemon a shadow or purify it, every time I do it I'll earn some DP("Dark Points" still thinking on it) then the points should be used.
Let me know what you think about my idea.

 

[tImE]

Well, making the game akin to Colloseum or XD:GoD would definitely make it easier, since you can't acquire as many Pokémon, which would mean the player has a more feasible task of making the most out of their Pokémon.

But, using Shadow Pokémon may confuse players who have played Colloseum or XD, since your game would work differently.
I'd rather recommend you make a "Light Pokemon" or something like that, which is the opposite of a Shadow Pokémon maybe?

What you should focus on though, if you decide to do this, is that you need to give the player a variety of Pokémon which can fit different roles, but try not to include Pokémon like Salamance, since it can basically only use high Attack and Speed. Try to include Pokémon like Lucario, who is good at both Sp.Atk and Attack, so the player themselves can choose which way to go in the skill tree.

 

[Sauromon222]

I do not make games with pokemon essentials but after seeing this thread i thought of a way you could implement something like this. As the pokemon levels up based on its highest ev it learns moves related to that stat such as regular attack ev making the pokemon learn normal and fighting attacks. Just an idea but it would be cool to see implemented.
Edit: One Last Idea you could make pokemon's prolonged high or low happiness turn it light or shadow/dark.

 

[FL]

If the trainer have a skill level that level up when you conquer more things in-game like story progression or even medals would the cool and innovative. If the trainer had a total of 10 levels, so you can unlock all abilities/moves avaliable up to level/tier 6 if you have level 6. This would make more interesting for easily unlock moves/abilites for other pokémon after you advance at the game.

I disagree about doing a skill tree with EVs except if you can more easily control EVs like at XY or even something like Sword of Mana, where you can choose the status that will gain EVs at each level gain.

 

[Animakuro]

I have a few suggestions, but keep in mind that I do not currently use RPGmaker, I am just hovering around a couple of forums to get a general feel of the software, of how it works and what it can do, but when it comes to Games Design in general I am somewhat knowledgeable.

Firstly, I do not recommend that you have levelling up as a feature in the Skill Tree, rather unlock points to spend in the skill tree by levelling up. Unlocking a new Skill Point every five levels could be somewhat reasonable, depending on the level range of the your game and how much depth you want to go into. Say you want large skill trees with plenty of choice and your game only takes the Pokémon from levels 20-40, offering only 4 skill points to assign, that wouldn't suit your needs. How often you would gain Skill Points and how many the average Pokémon would spend over the game is something you would need to figure out yourself.


In my opinion, a Skill Tree in a Pokémon game would be a very interesting idea and I'd like to see it take centre stage, with evolution and learning new moves also handled by the skill tree. If evolution were to be handled by the skill tree, I'd make it possible around the time the Pokémon would evolve naturally be level. For example, Charmander evolves at level 16, so make its evolution perk somewhere either 3 or 4 points deep into its skill tree, assuming Skill Points are gained every 5 levels like mentioned above. Also, any new Pokémon recruited into the party should have all their skill points available. Say a Lucario joins your party at Lvl 35; it should have 7 Skill Points available to spend from the start.

As mentioned above by another poster, it would be best to give Pokémon to the player that are somewhat divertive and allow for customization within a Skill Tree like system. Of course, Base stats of a species can be edited within Pokémon Essentials (If I'm correct) so a few small tweaks to make a certain species fulfil your needs shouldn't hurt. Without the need to tweak base stats, the following families could work in this kind of game.


Charmander family – The actual species themselves are somewhat restricted in their abilities, but if you were to branch the skill tree out into two paths after charizard's evolution, each branch cumulating in unlocking one of the Mega Evolutions for use in battle. Perhaps you could disable the need for Mega Stone and have Mega Evolutions only required the player to have unlocked them on the Skill Tree.



Nidoran Families – Both Nidoqueen and Nidoking are Pokémon with balanced out Base Stats, with Nidoqueen slighting leaning towards defence and Nidoking towards offence. Both Pokémon also have large, diverse movepools. Personally I'd make these two Pokémon share the same Skill tree as their base stats are quite similar and learn similar moves.


Poliwag Family – Keep the Skill tree linear up until the point of evolution, with branching paths for Poliwrath and Politoed. After the player has picked an evolution, they obviously cannot pick the other evolution and all skill perks in that branch are now lost.



Slowpoke Family – Same as above, branching paths for its two evolutions.



Tyrogue family – The same case as above but somewhat more complicated, with three branching paths for each of its evolutions.



Lapras – A diverse movepool, all around decent stats with great HP.


Eevee – Same with the above families with branching path for evolutions. However, I'd make the evolutions fairly early in the tree and then simply have linear skill trees for each of its eeveelutions.


Togepi Family – Togekiss two differing abilities (Not counting its hidden ability) allow it to attack on both sides of the spectrum and a diverse movepool allow for lots of ways to bring down opponents.


Porygon Family – Porygon itself is fairly simple, but Poygyon-2 and Porygon-Z offer quite a lot of customization, with the decision of evolving Porygon-2 further is debatable in itself.


Ralts Family – Same as with a lot of above examples, Ralts and Kirlia would be linear, with the main choice being an evolution between Gardevoir and Gallade. The balancing act might be tricky between those two choices, as ideally both would be equally desirable, but with Gardevoir having a mega evolution, said balancing would have to be very well designed.


Spiritomb – Can be somewhat diverse in its defensive role.


Lucario – Obviously, this Pokémon makes a very mixed attack, with branching paths focusing on Atk and Sp.Atk being the obvious choice for this Pokémon. If so, both branches should convergence again in the end for its mega evolution.



Duskull family – Dusknoir is a very strong bulky Pokémon, with damaging moves of many different types and quite a few status moves to back it up.


This list should be by no means considered an extensive research effort; I merely skimmed the national Pokedex for obvious choices for Pokémon with a little diversity. Now for what customization could actually be offered within the skill trees of these Pokémon? Well the most obvious choices here are:


EV Points – Pretty Simple. Put a Skill Point here, get some Evs in the stat shown. Could come in Small, Medium and Large varieties, with the larger points being deeper in the trees. Small EV Perks could be around 8 Evs (2 Stat Points) Medium 20 (5 Stat Points) and Large 40 (10 Stat Points). These values may seem pretty large, but it would feel rewarding to be given a nice chunk of stats when you invest your Skill Points.



New Moves – Pretty obvious. Invest a Skill Point here and learn a new move.



Upgrade Moves – Using the RPGMaker engine, this would actually be a trick that is actually the same as above, and a lot of games do this. Let's take the move Dynamic Punch, which has a high base power and always confuses its opponent if it hits, but has a low accuracy of 50. However, the move could be upgraded with the skill tree, improving the accuracy to 60, 70, and 80 and so on. The way this would be done is to actually delete the old move and replace it with a new one with the all the same properties except with the improved accuracy. If I am correct, moves in Pokémon Essentials are given Internal Names. I imagine the script for this would be to tell the game to delete the move DynamicPunchV1 and replace it with DynamicPunchV2 (Or whatever your internal names for them would be) and as long as its display name remains the same, the suckers will never know :P


Ways to upgrade moves could be –


Improved Power or Accuracy.


Added Secondary Effects – Flinching, Burn, Poison, paralysis ETC


Greater chance for secondary effect – Increase % chance of secondary effects taking place.
Change the type of the move – Only on moves where this is plausible.


Add Stat modifying effects – Change attacks so that they lower the opponents base stats or boost your own. Like mentioned above, you can then rise the % chance of this or increase the effect from 1Stage to 2Stages and then to 3Stages.


New abilities – Again this pretty obvious, change the Pokémon's ability. Why restrict this to abilities the Pokémon naturally have too? Go nuts!



Upgrade abilities – Same as the above method, replace abilities with new ones without letting the player know. Examples could include boosting the Attack Drop that Intimidate gives to its opponent, increasing the critical hit bonus from Super Luck.


Change or add types to Pokémon – This is subjective and may annoy some players, but I personally think this is plausible on certain Pokémon. Changing Weezing to Poison/Rock for example.
[FONT=&quot]
Again, I should remind you i am currently only studying RPGMaker and not using this, what I list above may not be possible, but I hope it helps :)
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[Daruda]

Well, making the game akin to Colloseum or XD:GoD would definitely make it easier, since you can't acquire as many Pokémon, which would mean the player has a more feasible task of making the most out of their Pokémon.

But, using Shadow Pokémon may confuse players who have played Colloseum or XD, since your game would work differently.
I'd rather recommend you make a "Light Pokemon" or something like that, which is the opposite of a Shadow Pokémon maybe?

What you should focus on though, if you decide to do this, is that you need to give the player a variety of Pokémon which can fit different roles, but try not to include Pokémon like Salamance, since it can basically only use high Attack and Speed. Try to include Pokémon like Lucario, who is good at both Sp.Atk and Attack, so the player themselves can choose which way to go in the skill tree.

I don't know about a light pokemon, really, altrough it's interesting... I'll think something.
About giving pokemon to the player, I think the first pokemon will just be a normal pokemon, then you'll have a shadow/light pokemon gifted, finally you will catch them.
To catch pokemons, you'll use pokeballs. (I'll just turn every pokeball in a snagball (hopefull I've name it right lol) )
I'm having doubts about make pokeball buyable or make them limited, I even thinked to make tournaments to win pokeballs, in fact I wanted to have many place with tournaments and ranks(like -FL- game, it was awesome.), I don't really think that gym's fits too much the game.
Well, how to make shadow pokemons appear, it's simple for boss and the rival, I think there is even some check if I have catch some pokemon in the team for future encounters, but should add some event?
Grunts with them? Or trainers? I'm afraid of making the player save every trainer he encounters.

I do not make games with pokemon essentials but after seeing this thread i thought of a way you could implement something like this. As the pokemon levels up based on its highest ev it learns moves related to that stat such as regular attack ev making the pokemon learn normal and fighting attacks. Just an idea but it would be cool to see implemented.
Edit: One Last Idea you could make pokemon's prolonged high or low happiness turn it light or shadow/dark.

Ev dipendent moves/abilities is a good idea, but it wouldn't have that much of a input of the player.
I hardly care for EV in fan-made game....wuoldn't it be annoying to use it?
The last idea is really nice, but shadow pokemons have already some sort of "happiness" bar that let you purify them if it's fill.

If the trainer have a skill level that level up when you conquer more things in-game like story progression or even medals would the cool and innovative. If the trainer had a total of 10 levels, so you can unlock all abilities/moves avaliable up to level/tier 6 if you have level 6. This would make more interesting for easily unlock moves/abilites for other pokémon after you advance at the game.

I disagree about doing a skill tree with EVs except if you can more easily control EVs like at XY or even something like Sword of Mana, where you can choose the status that will gain EVs at each level gain.

I was thinking about medals too! You know lately I've played Pokemon super Eevee, innovative game, because a friend told me that it could help me and I loved getting medals.
Trainer level/rank is a thing I've been thinking lately, I through that I could get points to Lv up doing tournaments and get pokeballs too, even the pokemon would get exp! If you don't have played colosseum, there where a hard challenge where you had to battle with 100 trainers, in sets of 10, well, something like that would be awesome.
Level up for the player would work like badges boosts and will unlock things, but I don't like HMs, I won't add them.
My trainer will have super strenght! He'll smash rocks barehand! (lol)

I have a few suggestions, but keep in mind that I do not currently use RPGmaker, I am just hovering around a couple of forums to get a general feel of the software, of how it works and what it can do, but when it comes to Games Design in general I am somewhat knowledgeable.

Firstly, I do not recommend that you have levelling up as a feature in the Skill Tree, rather unlock points to spend in the skill tree by levelling up.
It's a problem for shadow pokemon, shadow pokemons level up after they have been purified, if not they would be too strong, they don't have any weakness (If I'll add fairy/light, it will be one) and shadow moves are really OP to make up for the low lv.

Unlocking a new Skill Point every five levels could be somewhat reasonable, depending on the level range of the your game and how much depth you want to go into. Say you want large skill trees with plenty of choice and your game only takes the Pokémon from levels 20-40, offering only 4 skill points to assign, that wouldn't suit your needs. How often you would gain Skill Points and how many the average Pokémon would spend over the game is something you would need to figure out yourself.
I love this take, but more that lv up, I think that something that uses the times you battle, exp, ev, lv ups altrough are more solid .

In my opinion, a Skill Tree in a Pokémon game would be a very interesting idea and I'd like to see it take centre stage, with evolution and learning new moves also handled by the skill tree. If evolution were to be handled by the skill tree, I'd make it possible around the time the Pokémon would evolve naturally be level. For example, Charmander evolves at level 16, so make its evolution perk somewhere either 3 or 4 points deep into its skill tree, assuming Skill Points are gained every 5 levels like mentioned above. Also, any new Pokémon recruited into the party should have all their skill points available. Say a Lucario joins your party at Lvl 35; it should have 7 Skill Points available to spend from the start.

This idea is really something, I would like to do this, I must really go to see if it's makable, the real problem is if I can gasp essentials because even if I know a little of ruby, I have problems to find things in so many scripts.
If I had enough understanding of essential I would add Evs after every LV up, like stat points....I'm still in the trial of many things and making a a new menu.


As mentioned above by another poster, it would be best to give Pokémon to the player that are somewhat divertive and allow for customization within a Skill Tree like system. Of course, Base stats of a species can be edited within Pokémon Essentials (If I'm correct) so a few small tweaks to make a certain species fulfil your needs shouldn't hurt. Without the need to tweak base stats, the following families could work in this kind of game.
Yeah, I could even make a 500 atk magikarp lol
And I'll boost the starters stats if they are not so strong.

Charmander family – The actual species themselves are somewhat restricted in their abilities, but if you were to branch the skill tree out into two paths after charizard's evolution, each branch cumulating in unlocking one of the Mega Evolutions for use in battle. Perhaps you could disable the need for Mega Stone and have Mega Evolutions only required the player to have unlocked them on the Skill Tree.

To let a pokemon be able to mega evo, maybe it isn't so hard, I'll simply set the ring on and watch how it works with a hold item and see if I can make it work it with some sort of switch.

Nidoran Families – Both Nidoqueen and Nidoking are Pokémon with balanced out Base Stats, with Nidoqueen slighting leaning towards defence and Nidoking towards offence. Both Pokémon also have large, diverse movepools. Personally I'd make these two Pokémon share the same Skill tree as their base stats are quite similar and learn similar moves.


Poliwag Family – Keep the Skill tree linear up until the point of evolution, with branching paths for Poliwrath and Politoed. After the player has picked an evolution, they obviously cannot pick the other evolution and all skill perks in that branch are now lost.



Slowpoke Family – Same as above, branching paths for its two evolutions.



Tyrogue family – The same case as above but somewhat more complicated, with three branching paths for each of its evolutions.



Lapras – A diverse movepool, all around decent stats with great HP.


Eevee – Same with the above families with branching path for evolutions. However, I'd make the evolutions fairly early in the tree and then simply have linear skill trees for each of its eeveelutions.


Togepi Family – Togekiss two differing abilities (Not counting its hidden ability) allow it to attack on both sides of the spectrum and a diverse movepool allow for lots of ways to bring down opponents.


Porygon Family – Porygon itself is fairly simple, but Poygyon-2 and Porygon-Z offer quite a lot of customization, with the decision of evolving Porygon-2 further is debatable in itself.


Ralts Family – Same as with a lot of above examples, Ralts and Kirlia would be linear, with the main choice being an evolution between Gardevoir and Gallade. The balancing act might be tricky between those two choices, as ideally both would be equally desirable, but with Gardevoir having a mega evolution, said balancing would have to be very well designed.


Spiritomb – Can be somewhat diverse in its defensive role.


Lucario – Obviously, this Pokémon makes a very mixed attack, with branching paths focusing on Atk and Sp.Atk being the obvious choice for this Pokémon. If so, both branches should convergence again in the end for its mega evolution.



Duskull family – Dusknoir is a very strong bulky Pokémon, with damaging moves of many different types and quite a few status moves to back it up.


This list should be by no means considered an extensive research effort; I merely skimmed the national Pokedex for obvious choices for Pokémon with a little diversity. Now for what customization could actually be offered within the skill trees of these Pokémon? Well the most obvious choices here are:

I don't have words to thank you for your effort and the research seems well done!


EV Points – Pretty Simple. Put a Skill Point here, get some Evs in the stat shown. Could come in Small, Medium and Large varieties, with the larger points being deeper in the trees. Small EV Perks could be around 8 Evs (2 Stat Points) Medium 20 (5 Stat Points) and Large 40 (10 Stat Points). These values may seem pretty large, but it would feel rewarding to be given a nice chunk of stats when you invest your Skill Points.



New Moves – Pretty obvious. Invest a Skill Point here and learn a new move.



Upgrade Moves – Using the RPGMaker engine, this would actually be a trick that is actually the same as above, and a lot of games do this. Let's take the move Dynamic Punch, which has a high base power and always confuses its opponent if it hits, but has a low accuracy of 50. However, the move could be upgraded with the skill tree, improving the accuracy to 60, 70, and 80 and so on. The way this would be done is to actually delete the old move and replace it with a new one with the all the same properties except with the improved accuracy. If I am correct, moves in Pokémon Essentials are given Internal Names. I imagine the script for this would be to tell the game to delete the move DynamicPunchV1 and replace it with DynamicPunchV2 (Or whatever your internal names for them would be) and as long as its display name remains the same, the suckers will never know :P

That's pretty ingenious! The problem is that there are even some 4 gen move that don't work, it may be more hard of what it seems.....hopefully not. lol


Ways to upgrade moves could be –


Improved Power or Accuracy.


Added Secondary Effects – Flinching, Burn, Poison, paralysis ETC


Greater chance for secondary effect – Increase % chance of secondary effects taking place.
Change the type of the move – Only on moves where this is plausible.


Add Stat modifying effects – Change attacks so that they lower the opponents base stats or boost your own. Like mentioned above, you can then rise the % chance of this or increase the effect from 1Stage to 2Stages and then to 3Stages.


New abilities – Again this pretty obvious, change the Pokémon's ability. Why restrict this to abilities the Pokémon naturally have too? Go nuts!



Upgrade abilities – Same as the above method, replace abilities with new ones without letting the player know. Examples could include boosting the Attack Drop that Intimidate gives to its opponent, increasing the critical hit bonus from Super Luck.


Change or add types to Pokémon – This is subjective and may annoy some players, but I personally think this is plausible on certain Pokémon. Changing Weezing to Poison/Rock for example.
[FONT=&quot]
Again, I should remind you i am currently only studying RPGMaker and not using this, what I list above may not be possible, but I hope it helps :)
[/FONT]

Thanks you all! I didn't think it would get so many replies, I'm really happy....