Gaming If three's a crowd then why is seven a party?

[Sandy]

I want to stir up a little conversation over the [B]amount of playable characters in rpgs[/B].

To my knowledge, when the roleplaying games were first transferred to videogames, the party consisted in most cases from one sword-wielding hero who had to hack&slash his way through hordes of monsters in order to save a princess. The thing that separated the rpgs from e.g. platformers was the fact that the hero's strength grew as the game progressed.

Then, when technology allowed some variation, the swordsman gained occasional mages and thieves by his side. One hero was replaced by a party of heroes, usually three or four members. Still, the stories were in most cases very simple, and the party members had little to no personality in them. Good example of a game like this is of course the first Final Fantasy.

As time flowed onwards and technology advanced, more and more complex storylines appeared, requiring more and more complex characters. When the invention of switching characters during the gameplay was born, the amount of members in the party of heroes grew rapidly. In the Final Fantasy series the largest amount of playable characters was in the sixth part (fourteen main characters in total, plus some guests). While the FF-series has calmed down from that (steadily decreasing the amount of playable character), some other games that have been made have had massive amounts of heroes. The best example might be Chrono Cross with fifty or so recruitable characters, although I've understood that some game has 108 (Have I understood correctly? What is the game then?)

People may agree that the games with ten+ playable characters usually suffer from the same problem as the first rpgs: most of the characters have very shallow and simple personality, and don't develop at all during the game.

Then we come to modern days. Two words: Radiata Stories. 150 playable characters. I think we can forget about deep, complex personalities when it comes to this game. To balance that, many other recent rpgs have parties of three. It's all or nothing, then.

Now I'm going to get contradictory: I actually don't mind large troupes of heroes. The anxiously waited Final Fantasy XII is said to have very many playable characters, and I'm excited about that. It's the fact that the more characters a game has, more plot twists and relationships it contains (and I'm a sucker for [I]those[/I]!). A party of three or so characters begins to annoy me in the long run, I like variety and freedom of choice. To this issue as well applies the context of modesty. I'm not looking forward for FF XII to have 50 characters, just maybe twelve or so. I know scriptwriters can create twelve unique characters with deep personalities and a place in the storyline, but there's no way they can create fifty at least somewhat interesting characters. It would mean that after a while the characters you recruit during the storyline would start to be something like "Bob the Baker" or "Mary the Random Girl You Rescued From The Thirteenth Dragon".

Just a while ago I tried to prove myself wrong by writing a little FF-style "gamescript" that would have as many members in the party as I could force into it. I got 19 characters, but most of them seemed to have been ripped off from the most traditional rpg ever to be made, e.g. a knight, a princess, a samurai, an elf ranger, a random moogle, a fairy, not one but two dragons who could turn into humans etc. The most original one I made up was probably the female werewolf shaman. Ultimately only about four of the whole lot had any greater significance regarding the plot.

I know what you think about my little hobby, but I love making gamescripts (and sometimes apply them here for an online rpg).

Huff, I think I've written enough now, I want to hear your intake on this issue. Simply said, [B]which do you prefer in a rpg: hordes of playable characters or just a few of them?[/B]

[Purple Haze]

Personally for me I'd rather just have a few of them. The main reason I like FFX-2 was becaus eit only had 3 characters. In previous FF I had to level up worthless characters that I never use ( Zell, Khimari, Wakka, Quistis etc.) But if it's a game like tales of symponia where the characters that you don't use also gain the sam amout of experince that the character in battle gain then it makes it a little more fun to use those characters. And when you have hordes of charcters most of them hardly fit into the storyline at all and some don't even fit in period ( Star Ocen :Til the end of time has this problem with Roger, and Peppita). They just added them to makeit seem like you're gonna have a bigger selection of character to use when most of the time you won't.

So I'd just rather have a few characters in a RPG that a whole bunch.

[Semjaza]

It depends vastly upon the game. I've played many where there are many characters to pick from and they're all decently developed. In these cases, many times I wind up liking certain characters more than others. I talk to different people and they like completely different ones than I do. A lot of a character's appeal depends heavily on the person who is playing it, I think.

I'm also a fan of games where the character is not developed much as it is. Shin Megami Tensei: Nocturne, for example, has a pretty much blank canvas main character that believes what you want him to and says what you want him to say. A lot of it comes down to imagination, I think.

There are also RPGs with many main characters that aren't deeply developed at all, but I still wind up forming attachments to them. I think this has a lot to do with design and the progress of the game. Mentioning Nocturne, again, most of the development is in your surroundings and NPCs and in your choices. Your party members are all personality-less demons that do little other than fight for you... but I still find myself liking some more than others and enjoying having them on my team.

I've played games where characters are largely the centerpoint, yet I still don't find them compelling, realistic or interesting. A recent example is Shadow Hearts: Covenant. In terms of character "development", there's a lot of what people like in this game... lots of talking, focus, change, etc. Yet, if I don't find them interesting, what exactly does it matter? Still other people love these characters, so again I bring up the idea of personal appeal.

I'm kind of just rambling, but my main idea is that it just depends a lot on the design goal of the game in question.

[2010DigitalBoy]

I like it more when there are 3 to 5 charachters. In Final Fantasy X, the 7 charachters were just too hard to level up. I only ever ended up getting Lulu, Wakka, and Auron to higher levels. Meanwhile my favorite RPG, Golden Sun, only has 4 charachters who are all easy to train because you can send them all into battle at once. The variety in this game comes from the fact that you can make tons of combinations with the Djinn. Games like Final Fantasy Tactics Advanced where you have like eleventy billion charachters who only say 3 lines of text in the entire game are just annoying.

[Desbreko]

[color=#4B0082]For me, it really just depends on what the game is trying to do. Though it also depends on how well it pulls that off, of course.

For a game like FF Tactics Advance, the characters really aren't the main focus of the game, so I don't care if they're well developed. I played FFTA entirely for the battling and leveling up; the characters I only found good for mocking because of their cheesy lines.

A game such as FFVII, which has a lot of character interaction and has a big focus on the characters, though, I'd expect a lot more. Not every character has to be highly developed, but the main few of the party I expect to be good.

As for straight number of characters, I prefer a middle ground. I like being able to field four or five characters at a time, with a total party of around twice that to choose from. Or something like what FFIV does, where even though you don't get to choose what characters to use, your party cycles through various characters throughout the game. Without any variety at all, I find the character interaction within the party gets a bit boring.

A good game to bring up for the side of have tons of characters, though, is Chrono Cross. (It has 35 playable characters, I think the number is.) The thing about CC is that, while there are a lot of completely random and undeveloped characters that are thrown in just for the heck if it, there are also those core party members who have well developed backgrounds and whom the story revolves around. So I think CC manages to strike a nice balance in that regard. It gives you a few main party members who you can stick with, but also gives you the option to play around with other funky characters who you might take a liking to.

On the side of having only a few characters, I think the closest game I've played for this would be Skies of Arcadia Legends. Though the main reason the character interaction didn't get boring there was because the characters were actually funny. Not something you see in many RPGs anymore, which is a shame.[/color]

[satan665]

It was Suikoden that has the 108 playable characters, though mostly the challenge is in finding and recruiting them.

I think that when they start adding more than 4 or 5 characters to a RPG, its ok as long as they make an effort to let you use all of them. I hate it when I like all of the characters, but have a hard time keeping all of them in the game. Final Fantasy 7 was like that for me. Even though the characters you didn't use still leveled, you didn't get their limit breaks and they were less useful. FFX was much better since they let you switch on the fly.

I think that if you get a ton of characters you should be able to divide up into more than one party. That would be fun, to be able to send one party to the dungeon and the other to wait outside and guard, or secure an escape route. Play with the timeline a little.

[PWNED]

Yes it is a bit of a bugger when they include more than enough Unwanted Characters into the game alla FF6 but the characters are usefull in many situations if you think about it. I mean, one of the things you could do in FF6 is obtain every rage for Gau. But with the Suikoden games are there are 108 RECRUITABLE characters but about 70 Party Characters. The thing is that in Suikoden 2 is that each character should be used differently to others. The thing is that in FF8, Quistis and Selphie seem to play the same except with different Weapons and Limit Breaks.
Crono Cross does have a good amount, especially for a Snes Game ( Fairly Sure this one was the SNES one) and It seems to have fleshed out the background for the Major Characters but like other games, THE CHARACTERS THAT ARE NOT MAJOR JUST FEEL LIKE THEY ARE THERE FOR FUN.

One thing that should be there in more games is a character like Richmond from Suikoden 2, he could give you Background information about Various Characters. I found that was a good idea.

[Desbreko]

[quote name='Daermon_Nashabe']Crono Cross does have a good amount, especially for a Snes Game ( Fairly Sure this one was the SNES one)[/quote][color=#4B0082]Chrono Cross is a PS1 game. (And a two disc PS1 game, at that.) Chrono Trigger is the one on the SNES.

But about FFX, I agree that it was nice to actually have the possibility to use every character in nearly every battle, should you choose to. And each character was actually useful in nearly every battle, too. I'd really like to see more RPGs do things like that. Being able to manage a large party effectively can be a lot of fun, I find.

Also, FFVI was brought up, and that's a good example of just the opposite. While FFVI is one of my favorite games in the series, I think it would've been a lot better if you actually had a decent way of using more than just a few characters for most of the game, short of the times where you're forced to use others because of storyline events. I mean, you could change your party around all the time if you really wanted to go to the trouble, but the game just isn't designed to accomodate that. And in the end, you'd have a lot of weak characters compared to where your main party is supposed to be at in terms of levels, which would force you to do a lot more leveling than should be necessary. To get the most out of FFVI's multitude of characters, you really just have to play through the game multiple times, using a different main party each time.[/color]

[Sandy]

[QUOTE=Desbreko][color=#4B0082]
Also, FFVI was brought up, and that's a good example of just the opposite. While FFVI is one of my favorite games in the series, I think it would've been a lot better if you actually had a decent way of using more than just a few characters for most of the game, short of the times where you're forced to use others because of storyline events. I mean, you could change your party around all the time if you really wanted to go to the trouble, but the game just isn't designed to accomodate that. And in the end, you'd have a lot of weak characters compared to where your main party is supposed to be at in terms of levels, which would force you to do a lot more leveling than should be necessary. To get the most out of FFVI's multitude of characters, you really just have to play through the game multiple times, using a different main party each time.[/color][/QUOTE]


I don't fully agree with you on this, Des. There were actually several occassions during FFVI where you could split up the party: [spoiler]at least to my memory the places were the Narshe Battle, the Phoenix Cave, the Hidon's cave and Kefka's Tower.[/spoiler] Those events seemed really imaginative to me, something I haven't seen in the more recent FF-games. The dungeons were much more creative and puzzle-like, and it allowed the player to use (almost) the whole array of characters at once.

Besides, leveling up or boosting stats for the characters is what you do in every single FF-game and most other RPGs as well, so there's no reason to complain about having to do that in this game. ;)

FFVI is the kind of a game where you have the option to choose your favorite members for the party from a large variety of characters, thus you don't even need some of the characters, so why even bother with them? Some of them aren't even worth leveling up [spoiler], like Gau, Sabin and Umaro IMO[/spoiler].

Anyways, I'd like to see more dungeons like the ones mentioned above in future games - especially if the cast of characters is excessive.

[Desbreko]

[quote name='Sage]I don't fully agree with you on this, Des. There were actually several occassions during FFVI where you could split up the party: [spoiler]at least to my memory the places were the Narshe Battle, the Phoenix Cave, the Hidon's cave and Kefka's Tower.[/spoiler'] Those events seemed really imaginative to me, something I haven't seen in the more recent FF-games. The dungeons were much more creative and puzzle-like, and it allowed the player to use (almost) the whole array of characters at once.[/quote][color=#4B0082]Yeah, I know that the game does have parts that let you use multiple parties. (There are five times, I believe: [spoiler]While Locke is rescuing Tarra, the Narshe battle for Tritoch, the Phoenix Cave, Hidon's hideout, and Kefka's Tower.[/spoiler]) I also thought the three different scenarios that you get to play through, [spoiler]to guide each character back to Narshe after getting split up at the Returners' headquarters,[/spoiler] was neat. But the thing is, those are only a handful of occasions scattered throughout a huge game.

So I'm not really complaining all that much, as the game at least tried. Also, like I said, the storyline also makes you use some characters you might not otherwise pay much attention to. ... Though this can either be a nice bit of variety or an annoyance, since you don't get any choice. But at any rate, I'm saying it just could've been a lot better.[/color]

[quote name='Sage']Besides, leveling up or boosting stats for the characters is what you do in every single FF-game and most other RPGs as well, so there's no reason to complain about having to do that in this game. ;)[/quote][color=#4B0082]I might not mind, except that leveling in FFVI happens to be pretty boring for me. Some games I really don't mind leveling up in, but FFVI just isn't one of them. I'm pretty patient with mindless sorts of things like that, but really, it would take an insane amount of time to get every character I'd be interested in using up to a decent level and have the useful magic. Not something I care to do. :twitch:[/color]

[quote name='Sage]FFVI is the kind of a game where you have the option to choose your favorite members for the party from a large variety of characters, thus you don't even need some of the characters, so why even bother with them? Some of them aren't even worth leveling up [spoiler'], like Gau, Sabin and Umaro IMO.[/spoiler][/quote][color=#4B0082]That's actually kind of my point. You have all these characters, but you really don't need most of them except for those few parts in the game where they're required. Which can actually create an annoyance, if you've just been focusing on one main party for the whole game. You can either use your main, strong party and one/two other weak parties, or you can mix up your main party members with the others and have two/three mediocre parties. Neither of those cases make for an especially great setup.

And I can't believe anyone would think Sabin is worthless. He's one of my most used characters! Seriously, his Blitz abilities are awesome if you're decent at pulling them off. And later in the game, his final Blitz, the Bum Rush, regularly does 9999. That's basically Ultima against a single enemy, but without any MP cost. How could you not like that?

Also, I happen to like a majority of the characters in FFVI. I have enough "likes" to make at least two full parties, plus one or two others to go in the third party. So I [i]want[/i] to use them, even if it's not really necessary except for a few situations, but I don't get any sort of practical way to do it for the majority of the game.

That's why I was saying it's the opposite of FFX, which gives you a feasible way to use every character throughout the entire game. Maybe not the complete opposite, since there are those times in FFVI where you get to use multiple parties and such, but there's still a big contrast.[/color]

[Gelgoog Pilot]

It's true that alot of games that contain tons of characters start to lack in storyline...which is one of the main reasons I play RPG's, to find out the story and to get interested in the character relationships. Where I beleive the 108 'stars' I think they call them in suikoden, are pretty well planed out...they almost all play a role in the game's story[spoiler] like when you have to create your own town or castle court yard.[/spoiler] I actually believe that some games create all of those characters so that the user can pick out his/her favorites. I mean think about it, we all have played games where we prefer to use on character over others. Not really because they are stronger but because we just like them better somehow.

Then there are games with a few main palyable characters that ends up having the worst character interaction and storyline around. Ak.a. Drackenguard. Don't get me wrong, I love the game the fighting although sometimes repititious and drawn out is fun. But the other playable characters turned me off...In general the storyline and dialogue left something to be desired. If they had taken the time to connect the characters better or get the player engrossed in the plot...it would have been ten times better.

I guess in the end I'm like several others in this thread...I'll take the middle ground on amount of playable characters. It all depends on the effort put into the game by the writers and developers.

[Sandy]

[quote name='Desbreko][color=#4B0082']And I can't believe anyone would think Sabin is worthless. He's one of my most used characters! Seriously, his Blitz abilities are awesome if you're decent at pulling them off. And later in the game, his final Blitz, the Bum Rush, regularly does 9999. That's basically Ultima against a single enemy, but without any MP cost. How could you not like that?[/color][/quote]


I know it sounds insane, but I have a good enough reason for it: I couldn't use the diagonal arrow patterns with my PS controller. I don't know why I couldn't, they just didn't work! I wasted so many turns during the game just trying to enter the blasted Blitz codes in vain, so I just gave up, and left Sabin out of the final twelve [spoiler], as well as Shadow, but only because he was dead. :p [/spoiler]

Well, this was bit side-tracking from the subject at hand, but at least it evolved from the original topic, unlike so many other offtopic discussions. ;)