(it was me)
The game design term is “cognitive load”, how much mental effort the player uses just to engage with the game, before they can even start making interesting decisions and strategies. Most importantly, high load can cause frustration and anxiety in the player, or lead to impulsive decision making because working through every detail stops being fun. (You also don’t want load too low, which can lead to boredom, but this is effectively never a concern when modifying an existing game)
As a clear demonstration, imagine if there were 40 different weapon types. The hundreds of matchups make remembering which ones have advantage against which take much more effort and slow down play, having a higher cognitive load, compared to 6 or 7 weapon types.
In terms of decreasing load, for skills you could obviously have less of them, or less per unit. But, you could also use things like the UX systems Ghast mentioned in the first post, where the game more readily lets you check what skills do or reminds you which apply. Another possible way is using theming to make the connections between things more obvious and memorable. Pokemon’s 18 type chart is much more complex than FE’s weapon types, but leveraging interactions like ‘water beats fire’ and ‘electricity can’t hurt ground’ make much of the type chart more intuitive.
Using 7x as example, there are a lot of skills to keep track of and many original ones the players can’t have already learned from previous games, so I took several steps to reduce cognitive load and let the player focus on their tactical play:
-Each unit only has a few skills, generally one in their base class and a second after promotion (and in the first few chapters the player’s trainee units don’t have any).
-On top of that, the skills for tier 1 classes are on the simpler side, and are usually shared by multiple classes: light weight infantry like Myrms and Archers have the same skill, heavy weight Mercs and Fighters have the same skill, all the cavalry have canto, etc. You see them more often making them quicker to learn, and associate them with the utility that class of unit provides.
-Then, the more powerful and notable tier 2 skills define their classes, and the player can get used to them one at a time once they’re familiar with the earlier skills.
-Some of the more unique skills that have less obvious effects on the combat preview screen will have some visible indication on the map itself. The skills that have a passive aura affecting nearby units will tint the area around the unit, similar to Kishuna’s anti magic zone. The command mastery skills (Astra, Luna, etc) have to charge up over time, and when they’re ready the map sprites’s black outline will flicker white.
-And there aren’t any personal skills, so if you see a Fighter, regardless of team or whether they’re generic, you have a baseline of what to expect. Same with a Soldier or Mage or whatever.
