What's the Point of Status Effects? ~ Design Doc

Status effects are a staple of game design, but they aren't just for RPGs anymore. They have been added to all kinds of genres. But, why? What makes status effects such a useful tool in games like Persona and Monster Hunter, but also games like Street Fighter and Left 4 Dead? Let's look through the categories of status effects, some common pitfalls, and talk about some tips, tricks, and points that can help you make the most out of your status effects.

This video was sponsored by Skillshare.

#persona #monsterhunter #finalfantasy

[DesignDoc]

Games by order of appearance
0:09 Persona 5
0:13 Lost Odyssey
0:18 Xenoblade Chronicles
0:22 Star Wars: Knights of The Old Republic
0:28 Zelda: Breath of The Wild
0:32 XCOM 2
0:34 MGSV
0:36 Puyo Puyo Tertris
0:41 Final Fantasy XII
0:44 Persona 4
0:48 I am Setsuna
0:50 Super Mario RPG
2:14 Legend of Heroes: Trails in The Sky
2:17 SMT3: Nocturne
2:22 Dragon Quest (Switch)
2:30 Final Fantasy
3:30 Dragon Quest XI
3:34 Pokemon Sword & Shield
3:46 Final Fantasy X
3:50 Monster Hunter World
3:56 Final Fantasy IX
4:05 Octopath traveler
4:14 Dark Souls II
4:29 Pokemon Gold & Silver
4:32 Team Fortress 2
4:41 Tales of Vesperia
5:29 Street Fighter 2 HD
5:32 Dragon Quest VIII
5:39 Minecraft
6:02 Earthbound
6:07 Overwatch
6:27 Persona 3
6:33 Skies of Arcadia
6:48 Super Smash Brothers Ultimate
6:50 Sonic Mania
6:53 Final Fantasy XIII
7:00 Final Fantasy VII Remake
7:26 Final Fantasy VII
9:28 Chrono Trigger
10:11 Dragon Quest III (Switch)
10:20 Final Fantasy VI
13:07 Bug Fables
14:55 Final Fantasy VIII
16:10 Kingdom Hearts
16:45 SMT: Digital Devil Saga 2
17:09 Steven Universe: Save The Light
17:14 Chrono Cross
17:28 Slay the Spire
17:35 Ring Fit Adventure
17:47 Darkest Dungeon
17:54 Left 4 Dead 2
18:11 Skullgirls
18:25 Lisa The Painful

[gabrielraposo]

There's this boss on Bravely Second called "Turtle Dove" with attacks that can cause Love, making one of your units fall in love for another unit of your party
While in Love, your unit will always copy the move that the loved unit used (even if they don't have acess to it), so if you strategize around it, you can use this in your favor
But, if another character falls in love for the same unit, these two units will stop repeting the loved's moves and actually start attacking each other out of jelousy

[ballroomscott]

I'm glad you point out that making bosses immune to status effects makes status effects useless in the rest of the game. That's something that has bothered me for years.

[brockmckelvey]

Bad design: Bosses/High Level Enemies that are just completely immune to status effects.

What's the point in having characters that can inflict negative status effects if they can't inflict them when it matters most?

[tristanneal]

In case anyone wants to quickly refer back to a specific type of status effect:
4:16 Damage Over Time
4:40 Stat Buffs and Debuffs
5:07 Turn and Action Economy
5:48 Debilitators
6:12 Loss of Control
6:35 Shields
6:52 Setups
7:14 Transformations
7:40 KOs and Insta-Kills

[Clewi]

Taunt is also an important effect, to put in on someone who can stand the strong attack or do it to decide who dies instead of your main DPSer

[robertsides]

Status effects for me...
"Not gonna bother using them on trash enemies, since I can kill them so quickly."
"Oh, this boss is IMMUNE to status effects? Why do these things exist again?"

[samjames]

I like when there’s a way to get rid of effects. Monster Hunter World does this, where to get rid of fire/blast, you roll, theres energy drinks to get rid of sleep, antidotes and various antidote-related items for poison, doing something with the joystick for stun, nullberries for dragon/effluvium/water/ice/thunder, and... nothing for Paralysis. I like how it’s something different for most effects, so that you can get rid of them easily but you’ve gotta remember what does it. Wish some of the things you need a nullberry for were diversified a bit, but ahh well...

[tentailsjack]

I just love how Matador’s immense speed in Nocturne is just a genius tool to force the player to learn how if you don’t use buffs or debuffs you aren’t going to beat the game

[actualmadscientist]

My recommendation for immobility effects like stun or paralyzed, is to make them ramp up instead of being instantly activated. Such as needing to hit a foe three times to build up three stacks of stun, the first two stacks function as a "speed down" effect, and only turns into temporary immobility at three stacks.
Another benefit of this if a foe is immune to stun, three stacks can turn into a strong speed down effect instead. Stacking poison also lets you adjust how many turns you put into your poison damage, and makes poison focused characters able to specialize in doing something across multiple turns.

[beegyoshi]

I like that Burn and Paralysis in Pokemon have a secondary effect of cutting attack and speed in half respectively. Also, the badly poisoned status is really nice for especially tanky Pokemon

[joelmiller]

You can also make status effects too powerful, South Park the Stick of Truth comes to my mind, where all effects, specially bleeding are way too effective.
I played as a thief and I could just use a bouncing ball (that hits multiple enemies) with a perk that inflicted bleeding, and the ball would inflict anywhere from 2 to 5 stacks of bleeding on every enemy, now they lost a ton of health each turn and becausa I was a thief some of my abilities got bonus damage because the enemies were bleeding.
It made the game too easy, although it was satisfying pulling out that strategy.

[SirSomeguy]

I always like the Earthbound status effects because they were very real takes on what status effects would be in a modern setting. Nausea is one of my favorites, especially its effect in Mother 3, because you either take damage each turn from vomiting, or you feel too queasy to stomach any health restoring food, so you can't heal. It's a very tangible effect of an innocuous thing we experience in real life applied to the mechanics of a game.

[MikhailKutzow]

My first thought when it comes to status effects has to be the Etrian Odyssey series, the games that taught me to appreciate them when so many other JRPGs make them useless. While its list of status effects is pretty standard, it makes them extremely useful. The games are difficult - random encounters are a constant danger, rather than a mild annoyance - so anything that lets you mitigate this helps a lot. Particularly notable is poison, which deals a good amount of damage - often proving far more effective than other attacks against normal enemies, and still dealing a healthy amount of damage to bosses. And, yes, statuses work on bosses. While bosses do tend to have more resistances and immunities than normal enemies, they're still valid targets for statuses.

If anything, the game does lean towards status effects being a bit too powerful, but it works in the context of the games' difficulty. Getting your party wiped out due to being hit with status effects sucks (and in fact enemies with poison attacks are many a player's first game over), but it's not out of character for these games, so it feels less jarring. And when they're used to make things a bit too easy for the player, it's satisfying, because you know how difficult things can be - so anything that trivializes a fight makes you feel awesome rather than bored.

[valiantsword]

17:36 I never thought Ring Fit Adventure would be nominated like THIS.

[eulogous]

When it comes to games I've played with status effects, Etrian Odyssey is one of my favorites. Most bosses have at least one weakness to a status, and killing enemies while they have a certain status can net you a rare drop at times.

[killermelga]

For as many flaws FFXIII has, it was the game that made me realize status effects exist and aren't useless. The effect is so noticeable that it might as well be bad design (like you're actually forced to use deprotect to kill armored turtles or whatever, so it isn't much of a decision) but up until playing that game, I just brute forced/grinded through every turn based game ever.

[Camkitsune]

Earthbound had a couple of unique takes on status effects:
-Ness could get homesick, which would randomly waste turns until you called your mom.
-In addition to messing with your controls, the Mushroom would sometimes cause your targeting to change, but never in a way that made it predictable. It was also quite possibly the only status effect in any game that you'd be paid for getting treated.
-Characters could become Possessed: this entailed having an invisible enemy that would sometimes stun the possessed character and take pot-shots at their teammates for minimal damage.

WoW had the Corrupted Blood, which as a result of a coding oversight created a virtual version of the current global crisis.

Pokemon has several interesting status effects that, while useless in the main campaign due to how easy it is, can all simultaneously counter certain strategies and provide opportunities for the player that can use them effectively.
Of particular note are Encore (force a player to re-use the last move that they used for several turns), Rest (put your own pokemon to sleep to heal all damage - it also removes any other status they might have), Toxic (poison that effectively forces players to eventually switch or die from the accumulating damage), Substitute (take 25% damage to ensure that the next attack does nothing), and all kinds of arena-wide effects that are both specific and general in how they change the flow of combat.

In general, any game with a unique set of mechanics is going to present a similarly unique opportunity to mess with the effects via status effects.

[MiloKuroshiro]

It's really rare for me to care about Stat effects. If the game doesn't go out of its way to show how they're useful and well integrated to the systems.

SMT and DQ are basically the two ones that I see myself constantly thinking about it.

[DeliciousOrange]

My favorite story about status effects is the Chac enemy from FFX2.
These super-tanky, basilisk-like monsters can't be run from and they have a 255% chance to inflict Petrify on two of three party members every turn in combat.
So what happens when you walk into into a fight with 100% immunity to Petrify?
255% - 100% = 155% chance to petrify a target immune to petrify.
That's just how math works.