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I have an idea for a game that would work best with a party of six. Is six heroes in a party too many? I know I've seen Craze pull it off well though XD
unity- 03/19/2016 12:30 PM
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CloseIt would be all six fighting at once, rather than swapping them out. Tho I suppose I could do swapping them out if it would be better, but the idea of all six fighting at once kinda appeals to me, but I don't want to bog things down too much. Dunno if having to enter six sets of commands is too tedious.
eplipswich
2728
You can check out the game Exit Fate. That game pulls off the 6-party battle system extremely well:
(Exit Fate was made in RPG Maker XP, btw.)
(Exit Fate was made in RPG Maker XP, btw.)
Well, Exit Fate was based on Suikoden series, so... yeah. 6 characters can work out really well!
I'd suggest checking out either Suikoden 2 or 5 (1 can be a bit of a slog due to the times it was made in when it comes to gameplay, though the story is still pretty great). I could actually recommend a Let's Play of both if you don't have the time/ability to play them yourself, just to see how it works.
Or play Exit Fate, that works too. It's not quite as good as the Suikoden games, though~ (Yes, I am a liiiiiiiittle biased.) XD
I'd suggest checking out either Suikoden 2 or 5 (1 can be a bit of a slog due to the times it was made in when it comes to gameplay, though the story is still pretty great). I could actually recommend a Let's Play of both if you don't have the time/ability to play them yourself, just to see how it works.
Or play Exit Fate, that works too. It's not quite as good as the Suikoden games, though~ (Yes, I am a liiiiiiiittle biased.) XD
Oh, I completely forgot that Suikoden had six character parties XD I'll definitely go play more Suikoden! I'll check out Exit Fate, too! Thanks for the recommendations ^_____^
like libby said, skip suiko1. the story is interesting and important, but it's got a lot of early ps1 issues.
http://scibbe.com/stash/suiko/
my favorite LPer, and an old rm* guy! (he made the incredible Kinetic Cipher games)
suikoden 2 is in my top 5, probably even top 3, most favorite games. i do really recommend playing that one properly.
exit fate is also fantastic, as is SCF's first game, Last Scenario (but that only has 4-person parties).
my biggest recommendation as a mildly experienced gam makkur is this: the more party members you have, the slicker the battle flow needs to be, and the more focused each character should be. i also recommend playing or at least reading up on FF13 if you haven't, because the concept of very narrow classes can heighten the strategy of a large-party game. like, maybe the healer literally can't do anything but heal -- but she also has to take care of 6 people without aoe heals. have a character dedicated entirely to debuffing the enemy bit by bit with strong but short-lasting abilities. etc.
or, instead of going tall, go wide </4X gamer>. identify your primary roles (on top of normal tank/healer/damage, you'll want to know if you need "breakers" (see xenosaga 3), limit break bards, whatever). once you figure that out, give everybody half those roles. then watch as the player happily freaks out trying to min/max their turns (do i have cecil heal or debuff, if he debuffs then dedrie can heal but then she can't kill that vampire, although if i roll right i guess jasper and garret together could, but what if -- )
"but you said they should be focused!!" yeah, i did, but you can still do that going wide. having 3-4 abilities instead of 10 means that they have extremely specific powers, and it gives you less overlap (even within a role).
one other benefit for storytelling through gameplay is that with a fixed large party, you can have wildly different power levels for each character. you want Ben to be a shitty character who throws rocks? you can do that. the player can't do shit about it, but it's also mitigated some because he has 5 people to outweigh him instead of 2-3.
http://scibbe.com/stash/suiko/
my favorite LPer, and an old rm* guy! (he made the incredible Kinetic Cipher games)
suikoden 2 is in my top 5, probably even top 3, most favorite games. i do really recommend playing that one properly.
exit fate is also fantastic, as is SCF's first game, Last Scenario (but that only has 4-person parties).
my biggest recommendation as a mildly experienced gam makkur is this: the more party members you have, the slicker the battle flow needs to be, and the more focused each character should be. i also recommend playing or at least reading up on FF13 if you haven't, because the concept of very narrow classes can heighten the strategy of a large-party game. like, maybe the healer literally can't do anything but heal -- but she also has to take care of 6 people without aoe heals. have a character dedicated entirely to debuffing the enemy bit by bit with strong but short-lasting abilities. etc.
or, instead of going tall, go wide </4X gamer>. identify your primary roles (on top of normal tank/healer/damage, you'll want to know if you need "breakers" (see xenosaga 3), limit break bards, whatever). once you figure that out, give everybody half those roles. then watch as the player happily freaks out trying to min/max their turns (do i have cecil heal or debuff, if he debuffs then dedrie can heal but then she can't kill that vampire, although if i roll right i guess jasper and garret together could, but what if -- )
"but you said they should be focused!!" yeah, i did, but you can still do that going wide. having 3-4 abilities instead of 10 means that they have extremely specific powers, and it gives you less overlap (even within a role).
one other benefit for storytelling through gameplay is that with a fixed large party, you can have wildly different power levels for each character. you want Ben to be a shitty character who throws rocks? you can do that. the player can't do shit about it, but it's also mitigated some because he has 5 people to outweigh him instead of 2-3.
LockeZ
I'd really like to get rid of LockeZ. His play style is way too unpredictable. He's always like this too. If he ran a country, he'd just kill and imprison people at random until crime stopped.
5958
Three party members is about the ideal balance for making AOE heals and AOE buffs feel balanced against the single target varieties. Four isn't too much worse than three, and adds enough other strategies to make up for it.
When you have six party members you start really needing to create group-based targetting that hits several but not all characters, otherwise single-target beneficial skills become almost worthless.
You also run into more and more survivability issues if your game doesn't have tanking in it, because the party's HP needs to be split across more characters. If you give the party enough HP that the enemy wins in 18 hits, that means each character can only take half as many hits before dying as they can in a 3-character game, which can happen very easily due to RNG. If you give each character the same survivability that they'd have in a 3-character game, the party as a whole just feels invincible. While this isn't necessarily a problem, it means a lot of your combat is probably going to be balanced around the idea that the player's party members are dying semi-frequently. Revival will end up more important, and buffs will end up less important (since they normally vanish when you die).
I agree with Craze's suggestion about giving everyone multiple roles. It's not too hard to come up with six distinct roles for characters, but if the characters are dying frequently, their roles will need to overlap a lot because two enemy crits can mean the player no longer has their main healer. It also just generally seems like it'd be a waste to have a bunch of characters and not have those kinds of complex interactions between them.
When you have six party members you start really needing to create group-based targetting that hits several but not all characters, otherwise single-target beneficial skills become almost worthless.
You also run into more and more survivability issues if your game doesn't have tanking in it, because the party's HP needs to be split across more characters. If you give the party enough HP that the enemy wins in 18 hits, that means each character can only take half as many hits before dying as they can in a 3-character game, which can happen very easily due to RNG. If you give each character the same survivability that they'd have in a 3-character game, the party as a whole just feels invincible. While this isn't necessarily a problem, it means a lot of your combat is probably going to be balanced around the idea that the player's party members are dying semi-frequently. Revival will end up more important, and buffs will end up less important (since they normally vanish when you die).
I agree with Craze's suggestion about giving everyone multiple roles. It's not too hard to come up with six distinct roles for characters, but if the characters are dying frequently, their roles will need to overlap a lot because two enemy crits can mean the player no longer has their main healer. It also just generally seems like it'd be a waste to have a bunch of characters and not have those kinds of complex interactions between them.
Wow, thank you both so much for the great advice! :DDDDDDD I think I might be able to manage it, but yeah, I'll really need to pay attention to how the bigger party changes combat!
I like the idea of having roles overlap, so I'll probably go with that option. I want to have the whole setup actually have meaning and feel like it works with six, and if I can't make it work, I'll scale down to three or four and make you swap out party members instead.
Is it problematic to start the party off with two or three and slowly build up to six? I guess that'll make balancing harder as the first characters have to have essential roles that the later characters will overlap with.
@Craze: Sounds like I really need to play Xenogears Part 3 and FF13, which are both games I've been meaning to play for a while now anyways! Also, I downloaded Last Scenario the first time you recommended to me but still haven't played it, as I just forgot! >.>;;; Silly me XD
I like the idea of having roles overlap, so I'll probably go with that option. I want to have the whole setup actually have meaning and feel like it works with six, and if I can't make it work, I'll scale down to three or four and make you swap out party members instead.
Is it problematic to start the party off with two or three and slowly build up to six? I guess that'll make balancing harder as the first characters have to have essential roles that the later characters will overlap with.
@Craze: Sounds like I really need to play Xenogears Part 3 and FF13, which are both games I've been meaning to play for a while now anyways! Also, I downloaded Last Scenario the first time you recommended to me but still haven't played it, as I just forgot! >.>;;; Silly me XD
xenosaga, not xenogears... yes it's confusing, especially since they have some overlap in characters (there are barely disgusied Maria, Citan and Fei Fong Wong expies, among others). xenogears is terrible ;V (so are xenosaga 1-2.)
starting off small can definitely work, especially since it lets the player mix each skillset into their strategy better.
if you wind up feeling like only having a small handful of skills per character is getting dull, you can always have an upgrade system of sorts where you can tweak skills a bit (like if Relm has Fira: Deal high Fire damage and 50% Burning rate, maybe she can visit a shop in towns to swap between Blazing Fira (still deal damage to one, but attempt to Burn all foes) and Controlled Fira (if the enemy resists/is neutral to fire damage, gain back 40/20% of the MP used)).
starting off small can definitely work, especially since it lets the player mix each skillset into their strategy better.
if you wind up feeling like only having a small handful of skills per character is getting dull, you can always have an upgrade system of sorts where you can tweak skills a bit (like if Relm has Fira: Deal high Fire damage and 50% Burning rate, maybe she can visit a shop in towns to swap between Blazing Fira (still deal damage to one, but attempt to Burn all foes) and Controlled Fira (if the enemy resists/is neutral to fire damage, gain back 40/20% of the MP used)).
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