Number of characters, How many is too many Options

[DMBF]

Hey guys.

I have about 18 characters in my game. You can swap between them pretty much whenever you want. What's people's opinions on party sizes? Is there ever such a thing as too many characters?

[Shaddow]

As long as each character has a reason for being there, or is just random npc X, like a class builder instead of a character, then no, I do not believe you can have too many characters. One of my favorites series of RPGs, Suikoden, is built around the concept of 108 stars of Destiny, which means there are 108 characters, now only about 82 of those at any time are available to be on your party, but each character has a back story and a purpose to join your army. This is a great way to do it. So as long as all 18 of those characters has a purpose and at least a small story, then it is worth having them all.

[Jens of Zanicuud]

It seems like a huge roster... eighteen characters are a really huge number. I've never seen so many together since FF6.
Anyway, in my opinion, this could really be dangerous to your game, since you should have to develop not two or three but eighteen different stories, eighteen different fighting styles, eighteen different characters with passions, fears, dreams and so on.
You should be a great writer to set everything on the right path.

I'm generally for parties composed by a maximum of three characters. In my games, main characters are a number between three and five, plus various minor NPCs. I've never had more than seven playable characters, for the reasons I explained before.

Creating the whole story could be very painful and difficult with such a number of chars.

Good luck and best wishes

Jens

[amerk]

As long as you are able to develop each story and they're not thrown in haphazardly just because, and as long as you don't have to level grind each one separately, it shouldn't matter how many characters you have.

The biggest gripe I have is in a lot of those types of games, the characters outside of the party on reserve don't get EXP, forcing the player to grind through the same monsters over and over again to level everybody up.

There are scripts available that allow you to level up characters on reserve, and with this many possible characters, I'd say it's highly recommended.

[ZarroTsu]

The only time "too many characters" occurs is when too many of them begin to function the same, and the story fails to properly focus on them all. While admittedly the story could focus exceptionally well on two separate characters that are both "fighters" or "knights" or whathaveyou; there's no reason for them to have the same stats and/or skills, even if they were twins.

Generally, character stats and skills should reflect the character as an individual, and not be based off a generic preset list. As such, so long as the story CAN focus on a hundred characters at once, they should all easily be unique if you put that much effort on the cover.

And if you can't, sometimes one character is enough.

This post has been edited by ZarroTsu: Nov 28 2012, 07:17 AM

[Clord]

Be careful with that. I have seven party members in my project and giving them dialogue so that the player does not start to wonder "Why that one character is so quiet" can rather easily happen if you really have too many characters in your project.

This post has been edited by Clord: Nov 28 2012, 05:25 AM

[Strawberry]

We have 10 playable characters.

Mainly just to please the team who wants certain people in, and I really hope it's not too much and that they are all very different. Luckily no one is based on a "class" in battle, so they should all play differently (this is an action battles system, so it's a little different).

I'm about to rank everyone in a battle sort of way, just to make sure everyone is different. Yes, I'm more worried about battles - since that's the strong point of our game. XD

For story purposes, we shall see what happens. ;;

[bulmabriefs144]

I dunno about the 7 limit.

I managed ten people. Basically, you have to break it down into two parties, the alpha party having all your main characters, and the beta party having an extra four. The point is to include several scenes that are beta party heavy, because in all likelihood, 2/3 of the speaking lines will be taken by the point you get party members 5-9. Party member 9 in this game was a bonus character, who made frequent appearances as party of the plot. Member 10? In order to have her extra, but also not just a silent extra character, I ended up working her into the game epilogue (as the main character's daughter).

I'd say with four person parties, the standard is 10.

4 main party.
4 second party.
1-2 bonus characters, which shouldn't be random extras but should actually be worked into the plot.

In order to have a large party, you also need to base attacks around character personality, since the beta team and bonus players are not likely to get enough screen time. Example: FF6 Setzer. We meet him for like 3 major scenes in game. His battle system? "Oh, he's a gambler." It's evident right from the Slot ability, the dice weapons, and probably his limit break.

[Strawberry]

So, regard to having "many characters" I've opted out 3 characters from the team.

I think 7 for parties of 3 is enough. The other characters the team wants in, can just appear in the game randomly.

I haven't told Star about this, but I'm sure he'd agree as the 7 I'm keeping are the ones he wants anyway. XD

[DMBF]

It's good to see everyone else's opinions on this. Far too many people I know just say six because FFVII, XII and XIII had six .

In mine, there are 14 main characters and four 'bonus' characters that follow main characters for seperate reasons. Only one is silent, but I've kind of balanced it out by giving him the highest attack/HP of the party so he's really useful in combat situations (He is a pet, hence the silence). The plot is already done and each character has at least one (often two or three) sections dedicated to them. Combat wise, each character is based on a 'class' but often not a stereotypical one (To clarify, the game i'm designing is based off a D&D 3.5 campaign a ran over the last three years), so there aren't really any that can just be kicked to the back and forgotten about. Personally I like a larger party as it allows you to play with your favourites and ignore the characters you REALLY don't like (and we all know we have them). I'll certainly keep in mind the points about spreading the dialogue between all the characters.

Also amerk, that sounds really good about the idea for giving back-up members XP as well. If you could point me to a script for that it would be much appreciated.

Thanks for all the good feedback

[LockeZ]

Assuming it's a story-driven game, the right number is however many characters you can develop believably and make into important, dynamic characters. FF6 had 14 characters, but Mog, Umaro and Gogo had no characterization, backstory or personality, while Strago and Relm were very flimsy. I love FF6 enough to name myself after it, but Strago and Relm should have been combined into one character named Relm, and at least two of the three optional characters should have been dropped.

On the other hand, if all the characters have no story and just play differently, the right number is however many different gameplay styles you feel you can make. Pokemon has around 150 "characters" per game, but they are all just generic recruitables.

Suikoden tries to combine the two methods, and fails in my opinion. Instead of feeling like the non-important characters are a plentiful source of generic recruitable soldiers, they are made to just feel like shittily-developed characters. About thirty characters are meaningful to the story, about fifty should have been NPCs you never encountered again, and the rest shouldn't have even existed because they're just random unexplained weightlifters who will join you if you bring them bottled water or whatever. The fact that almost all of them play identically just have slightly different stats doesn't help either - my choice of party members has practically no effect, leading me to wonder why the game lets me pick my party at all. Still, making me care about thirty of them is a notable achievement, story-wise.

Fire Emblem has a similar problem, though its permadeaths sort of give it an excuse for doing so. It also never gives you more than three characters that play the same, and you can bring 8-12 characters into each battle. So even if half the characters' personalities amount entirely to nothing more than "mage who likes hamburgers" and "swordsman who is self-conscious about his height" you feel like they at least serve some gameplay purpose.

[Fonstw]

You have to know for yourself; Does (for example) 4 characters seem too less, too many or just about fine, and what about 3, or 5? Or 10, or 1?
This also differs to how the battle system works, and your own opinion; In a turn-based battle (standard one) for example I find 4 characters fine, but in a real-time battle on the map (like WoW but 2D) I like about 8 characters better; More chaos, more co-operation. (Someone else might find it too much chaos?)

This also differs to your class system, and the entire gameplay.

I don't know about your game, but all the advice I can give is: "Just see what feels right." (Simple but true)

[Rukiri]

The number depends on how deep you want the story to be and long, if your shooting for a 20-40 hr rpg you're probably alright using 10-15 characters.

There should always be supporting characters IE playable characters, characters that help you during the game but can't actually play as them and then you have your village idiots to add humor.

[bulmabriefs144]

Assuming it's a story-driven game, the right number is however many characters you can develop believably and make into important, dynamic characters. FF6 had 14 characters, but Mog, Umaro and Gogo had no characterization, backstory or personality, while Strago and Relm were very flimsy. I love FF6 enough to name myself after it, but Strago and Relm should have been combined into one character named Relm, and at least two of the three optional characters should have been dropped.

On the other hand, if all the characters have no story and just play differently, the right number is however many different gameplay styles you feel you can make. Pokemon has around 150 "characters" per game, but they are all just generic recruitables.

Suikoden tries to combine the two methods, and fails in my opinion. Instead of feeling like the non-important characters are a plentiful source of generic recruitable soldiers, they are made to just feel like shittily-developed characters. About thirty characters are meaningful to the story, about fifty should have been NPCs you never encountered again, and the rest shouldn't have even existed because they're just random unexplained weightlifters who will join you if you bring them bottled water or whatever. The fact that almost all of them play identically just have slightly different stats doesn't help either - my choice of party members has practically no effect, leading me to wonder why the game lets me pick my party at all. Still, making me care about thirty of them is a notable achievement, story-wise.

Fire Emblem has a similar problem, though its permadeaths sort of give it an excuse for doing so. It also never gives you more than three characters that play the same, and you can bring 8-12 characters into each battle. So even if half the characters' personalities amount entirely to nothing more than "mage who likes hamburgers" and "swordsman who is self-conscious about his height" you feel like they at least serve some gameplay purpose.

FFT had a better solution. You have about 10-30 unique characters that pretty much are alt-normal, but have a few special abilities to set them apart, and the rest are basically bought from the store. You spend a ton of time and effort if you want even the bought ones to level to decent, meaning even the knock-offs are important to the game, and you'll probably need to reset if you lose enough of them. You can also tame rare monsters which actually do add something to the game (some of these can actually be poached for rare items, especially the piggies you get later). And the hidden allies have abilities that are so interesting, it makes them worth collecting (especially that robot).

[magusgarkan]

Back when I first started, I had 10 characters total. The idea was similar to other rpgs I've played, in that you'd cycle through them until you ended up with a fixed group of 4 that would be your group for the last third of the game.

Now that I've gotten VX, the party limit doesn't seem to be there anymore, but I'm still sticking with my current roster. The only sad part is that I've had to drop one of the tertiary characters from my game due to the changes in sprites and graphics style.

[ZarroTsu]

Jeez you guys seem like you're throwing numbers out here just to look cool.

To elaborate on my other post, it doesn't actually matter how many characters your game has in total, so long as it's a number that comes naturally in the making of the game and plot itself. If you're shoving extra characters into the fray just to reach some 'quota', your cast of characters will ultimately suffer, and your game might suffer as well.

[amerk]

I agree with the above. I'll use Final Fantasy VII and Xenogears as an example. Both games have the possibility of 9 playable characters.

Final Fantays VII:I personally felt the party management was done poorly in that game. You had characters join up through story sequences that felt out of place and tacked on when they should have been side characters, and one of the side characters (Vincent) felt like he should have actually been a required party member. Not to mention, I didn't care for half the characters in that game (Yuffie and Cait Sith were the worst, in my opinion).

Xenogears:Then you have Xenogears, and while a couple of the characters were near useless in battle, most of them had a reason for being there, and were built around the story in such a way that made sense.

So it doesn't matter how many you have so much as how you choose to develop them and make them part of the story. If you're just adding playable characters just for kicks and to create a long mass of characters, more than likely you're not going to find people interested long enough to care to play through the game. If you're creating characters out of careful planning and consideration, it doesn't matter how many you have (3 or 10), as long as people are invested into the story and characters enough to care about what happens to them.

[userjosh704]

FF6 had like 12 or 14 or something and I thought it was too many. I couldn't tolerate Seikoden. The questions are: Do you have 18 strong characters or 18 weak characters? What are they there for? Are they important to anything?