The logistics of a suikoden-ish game

I've always been a fan of suikoden games where you collect a ton of characters. I want to lean towards a game with a large recruitable cast (about 30?). However, even while playing suikoden, I do tend to just use a set party and take a pokemon "catch em all" approach to collecting characters. I love how most of suikoden's recruitable characters unlock features in your base camp but how do you make all the playable characters unique and worth using, battle stats wise?

I'm making a game with Suikoden in mind in terms of character roster. One thing I'm doing (without giving too much away) is giving characters different combinations of certain abilities that aren't tied directly to their class. For example, healing spells for a melee user or dark magic for a light magic user. So far I'm having fun with it. And through playtesting, it has kept it interesting.

I'd suggest playing a ton of other RPG Maker games and if you see an interesting class or ability, base a character around that skill set.

You'll need a lot of ideas to fight against redundancy and some characters are just going to be plain better than the others. That's probably acceptable, since you'd space the recruitment out so the really good characters are obtained later on.

Like for example, you get 9 skill sets when you take the basic elements

Light
Darkness
Earth
Wind
Fire
Water
Ice
Lightning
Earth

2 more at least by using monster stuff.

Monster Skill, As in the character is actually a monster and this gives them special powers
Blue Magic, the character can copy some monster abilities

There's more skills by branching into people who buff or debuff others

Time, The character slows, hastes and rewinds time
Curses, the character inflicts debuffs
Healing: Recovers HP of actors


Then there's the physical skills

Knight, Protects party members
Warrior, Physical damage skills
Thief, steals stuff


And you can get into gimmicky characters who fit into the above categories but have special abilities that set them apart

Dancer, Causes another actor to have another turn by skipping its own.
Mine, Copies the actions of another actor
Vampire, Health Drain abilities
Gladiator, does physical damage, but increases in damage by geometrical progression with each strike
Luck, a gambling skill set with random chances to inflict damage or cause beneficial effects

Something suikoden did that encouraged the use of different party members was the unique combination skills between characters. If you used character A and character B, you have a unique move they use together - but a totally different one if you use character A with character E.

For me, the biggest challenge for these kinds of games is that party members you don't use fall behind in levels. I've never been sure what the best solution to this is. Maybe just have the same experience be given to everyone, even non-active party members...though this feels kind of strange.

It is a difficult thing.

Chrono Trigger encouraged the use of different party members through Dual Techs; if you want to see all the Dual and Triple Techs, you need to recruit everyone, and that calls for more work on your part as a developer. WRPGs, Mass Effect which is on my mind right now, would allow the player to select their own kit and then choose party members to compliment that kit. Pokemon's reasons for "gotta catch 'em all!" is a means toward the end that is its metagame. You build a team to defeat your friends' team. In an RPG Maker game, you're building a team to defeat a developer's team, significantly reducing your reason to have a lot of options.

In the end, what's the point of a huge number of party members other than just content? If you want something to study for "party-members-as-content," I'd like to direct you to, well, Suikoden. And particularly, Mass Effect 2.

What suikoden also did to encourage this was 'forcing' the player to have certain characters in their party or remove them for a period of time at certain points either for story-reasons, recruitment, etc. Ofcourse you'll need to be clear to the player this will be the case since there is nothing more frustrating then not using a character all game and then end up facing a boss battle with that character as mandatory.... so give the player a chance (like suikoden did for instance with the training facility) to level up your characters fast so they can catch up and make it clear wich scenes/battles will have mandatory characters and who they are before locking the player into a position where they can't go out and prepare for this.

Thanks for all the advice! I like the idea of combination skills and sidequests with "forced" party members sound fun too. Underleveled characters is definitely something I need to think about too.

With suikoden, I really liked how the world really felt fleshed out with all these random characters, and not just your party + important NPCs. I'll probably do sidequests that force you to bring certain members and unique skills :)

One thing to point out about Suikoden's design was how it handled exp and levelling.

Exp needed to level was always 1000, regardless of level. The amount of exp gained however was based on each character's level vs the monster's. This meant if you could get a weak character to survive a high level battle they'd level like crazy. Whereas overlevelled characters will be kept in line due to the reduced exp gains.

This system was part of how the game balanced weak and strong (in terms of level) characters, allowing for quicker catching-up than traditional levelling.

This system was what made suikoden (in my opinion) a great game because it had the vast world feel without the need to over-grind at some point. (though encounter-rates were a pain >_>)

Just make sure to give your characters a life and not just add them in because well it looks nice or you know...features :unsure:
a game with a large but uninteresting cast meeting NPC's for the sake of filling the world is less fun then a game with just a few characters meeting NPC's that actually have a life.

[dpost]Finnuval[/dpost]
If you want to add something, use the Edit button on your earlier post. If you want to quote more than one person, use the MultiQuote button.

Yeah sorry about that, I was (still am) New to the forum and hadn't figured the multi quote button out yet :blush: have mended my ways though, at least try to :D
Really hope I didn't anger the gorilla... :o