GREATREDSPIRIT'S PROFILE

Here's a great example of the Chronological and Finish-Start-Finish plots: Astroboy for the GBA
It starts out with a vague cutscene that seems to have nothing to do with the main plot and then the main game begins as a regular "Something is going wrong. Solve it with violence!" stage. Now you play through the game solving various problems that pop up which are mostly independent of each other but with a common theme (mostly) with a few loose ends that make you wonder if it was intentional as part of a cameo from the show or if it actually means something. The final stage is Astroboy trying to save the world from the lose/lose war that is going on between two sides who used to work together, one side plays their trump card, the other side gets annahilated, Astroboy dies and the big bad villians wins. Well shit.

What happens next? Astroboy gets revived and sent back in time to when it all started. You get to see the entire scene that the game started on, Astroboy knows what is going to happen and now he has to prevent the war from breaking out and make peace between the two sides. Not only does he know what is going to happen, he can go back to previous stages using information gained in the later stages to unravel more of what is going on and why everybody hates the other side (with plenty of "How did you know?"). All those loose ends get wrapped up, you defeat the main villian, and save the world.

I think of it as one of the best plots in video games. None of the characters are particularly interesting but the plot is incredibly well executed.




I think the bystander perspective is an interesting way to show the plot to the player. Even as an alternate perspective, maybe have the player running around, doing that saving the world shit and once in a while shift to the bystander, someone who is directly affected by what the player is doing. It can show the consequences of what the player does affects the regular person. Maybe something like a news reporter who's following the party and reporting on what they're doing.

I think a reporter following the FF7 crew would be interesting. "In today's news, Shinra's attempt to blow up the meteor failed after some terrorists boarded the rocket intended to stop meteor, took out the main explosive, and escaped!"

Thanks for the article. Its definetly something to think about.

The AI could get downright stupid. 99% of the time I had everyone was on knockdown so they'd properly exploit weaknesses (Junpei is terrible at this. Cast Agi to knock the enemies down and we'll AllOutAttack them quit using your damn sword oh you missed and fell over instead) and they don't target knocked down enemies. There'd be times when I set them to Support for party buffs buff their AI was terrible when one character lost a buff they'd recast the party buff, eating up their MP and wasting turns since they'd recast it next turn when the rest of the party lost it. Healing was awful as they'd never heal in the most effective way if the party's HP% wasn't below certain thresholds (Yukari quit using Diarahan and use Mediarama so the party doesn't die next turn!). If anyone gets charmed... well there's a chance your allies will do the right thing and decharm them before the charmed ally does something stupid like Diarahan the last boss, but you might also get the Sword of Kings in 10 minutes of farming.

Its leagues better than the next AI though and Akihiko is good with the debuffs (although there's no debilitate in Persona 3 which would be amazing). Once you start getting the good Personas though, the main character is the guy winning 99% of the fights (Sigfried is amazing) and can do a better job of healing the party (and he doesn't use Mind Charge and follow up with regular attacks. Mitsuru! ).

And Shinji is awesome. Go ahead and use him. Characters in Persona 3 get EXP based on their personal level compared to the enemies so leveling them up to speed is never a chore. Just because the main character gets 3 EXP a battle doesn't mean everyone else is.

If you have 4x the agility of an enemy then the steal rate is almost pointless. Over four attempts the chance of nabbing an item at 80% chance is 99.84%, while at 50% its 93.75%. The sheer number of turns you get will make certain that you can steal the item, and if you have 4x the agility then it isn't like any enemy can pose a threat to your party so when the 6.25% chance of failure kicks in there's no point in not making it five turns (~97%) to steal. Nevermind when the enemy has 4x the speed since you are going straight to Murdertown if you get one turn out of the enemy's four.

I think having 1.5x the opponent's speed would be a good value of getting max stealing rates. Its a value possible without being grossly overlevelled the enemy and you don't get successful steals out of sheer number of turns but out of having a good steal modifier. The equation: (60 * UserAGI)/TargetAGI - 10 will have Steal hit 80% steal rate at 1.5x agility (or 20% at 0.5x agility) for example. Using the 25 AGI for both targets if a Thief gets 3 AGI on level up then on your scale his odds go from 50%->52%, while on mine it goes from 50%->57%.

Of course it all isn't peaches. Since the steal % raises much quicker, it also drops quicker. Thieves who don't have a good AGI/EnemyAGI are terrible stealers. Plus it could make agility even more overpowered than it already is since not only can you pump out more turns but you can also steal an item sooner and get back to murdering! (although my thief was never good on the murdering stuff in Hero's Realm, but I also had a Champion as a damage dealer so _maybe_ that's just me :v)


Looking back at this now its probably more effort than its worth (if its worth it at all) and no players would notice but damn I'm not going to erase this post and waste the time I spent writing it by jingo!

Axolotls


I'll try to post more later.

Characters. You can have some crazy plot with twists and zany shit but its the characters who drive it and since I'll be controlling them for the next many hours I better not hate them. Also fuck mute protagonists for being completely uninteresting. At least in Chrono Trigger he died and never had to be used again.


Gameplay. There's no plot or characters that I've seen that would make me want to suffer hours of nerve grating gameplay so I can see what happens. Story/Characters helps me play through the game the first time, amazing gameplay makes me play through it again and again and again (oh god help me I'm planning to try a hard KMS run). Nothing helps if the game is a pain to play though.


Pacing. Every time there's a dungeon that serves no purpose except to have random fights and a puzzle with the possiblity of a boss I eat a litter of kittens. Have something character/plot wise happen. Please. Even "oh hay that huge plot revelation from five minutes ago sure was something!" "Oh yeah seriously" is better than pure filler. Even worse is when it takes forever for anything to happen. x4 multiplier for poor pacing when its the intro (Twilight Princess I'm looking at you).

*edit*
Gameplay > Characters, needed clarity