Number of characters, How many is too many Options

[TheCableGuy]

Personally, I hated games that had had you have multiple, non-required playable characters,
Unless they were ALL vitally important to the story of the game and even then,
the number of extra-party characters shouldn't surpass twice the total party capacity.

Another exception I'd accept would be a game in which you have choose one of many characters at the start
and play through the game multiple times, each time with a different character, with the game changing with each character.
And, even then, it'd get pretty boring pretty quickly.

Though honestly, I would much rather have a single character and have the option of building that one character in a hundred different directions.

This post has been edited by TheCableGuy: Jun 6 2013, 09:52 PM

[amerk]

The only time it may be okay to have more party members than needed is a Suikoden like game where recruiting is a necessity. I've never played Suikoden, but I've played some RM clones, most notably the Legion Saga trilogy.

There were a lot of characters I wouldn't bother with, and aside from story segments that required you to take certain characters, I typically stayed somewhere within my top 6 favorites. However, recruiting them was fun, and usually opened the way to new side quests, events, and items.

But games where you're just wandering around and 5 or 6 people randomly join you for no real reason within the span of a few short hours, no thanks.

Also, when you do have a reserve party that follows you around, please make it so they gain EXP as well even if they aren't in the fighting party. There is no greater frustration than to have multiple parties to level up, meaning you will have to constantly switch characters in and out and repeat dungeon areas just to catch everybody up.

[Waxius]

Also, when you do have a reserve party that follows you around, please make it so they gain EXP as well even if they aren't in the fighting party. There is no greater frustration than to have multiple parties to level up, meaning you will have to constantly switch characters in and out and repeat dungeon areas just to catch everybody up.

In FF6, the reserve party didn't gain xp. You HAD to level them up yourself, but if you equipped the Espers just right you could gain a lot of bonuses and build a lot of skills.

But in the absence of any good reason(such as bonuses for leveling up while having an item equipped) I completely agree that the reserve party should gain xp indirectly.

In my game project I plan to have 12 characters... and you'll be asked to "make 2 parties" or "make 3 parties" with your available list of characters. I do have a twist however... at least two of them will be diametrically opposed to each other. As such you will not be able to put these characters into a single party together, ever!

Also.. The main protagonist will have a light Karma system which will determine which of the two opposing characters he will ultimately align with.

When a brand new character joins your party.. I plan to set his/her staring level as an average of the levels of your existing characters.

[SilverPhoenixWF]

When a brand new character joins your party.. I plan to set his/her staring level as an average of the levels of your existing characters.

Could you explain how one could go about doing that? It sounds interesting, and I think maybe it'll be better for the game I'm making than have characters join at preset levels that could potentially be flat-out wrong depending on how my game develops.

On the topic of the... topic, I think that as long as the characters don't end up as clones personality wise and gameplay wise, you can have as many characters as you like. A game with a diverse cast has always been something that I like seeing, especially if the characters contrast eachother well.

[Waxius]

SilverPhoenixWF,

I answered your question here:
http://www.rpgrevolution.com/forums/index....showtopic=58897