Castle Paradox

msw188 · Joined: 02 Jul 2003 Posts: 1041

I was talking to somebody about RPGs the other day, and Chrono Trigger came up as a 'good, but not great' RPG. And then I mentioned something that I realized I had never mentioned on this forum (at least, not that I can remember). As far as the games that I have played, Chrono Trigger is the only one to offer some attempt at a 'good' reason why you can only have X number of characters in your party at one time.

In the OHR, we are limited by the engine to only allowing 4 fighting characters in a party at once. Why? Is it a memory limitation? Why has four become the fond number for these things? In reality, I'd think that any group of heroes going about trying to save the world (or whatever) would want to allow as many members of their party to fight as possible.

Has anyone here been able to come up with good reasons that the party size should be limited? I can imagine using the storyline, such that at no time does the party exceed four characters (by coincidence, so to speak), but I really can't think of any other good reasons. Chrono Trigger's idea about the timewarp stability was okay, I guess, but was obviously contrived. Any ideas?

JSH357 · Joined: 02 Feb 2003 Posts: 1705

I don't really like the idea of having a ten-person party in a battle-oriented RPG. It would get really confusing for the player to keep track of so many characters, not to mention the designer balancing things out. Of course, this is my personal preference, but 1-6 is plenty.

Strategy games are a different story, though. Tactics Ogre LUCT allows ten units that are highly specialized by the player and it works very well. Fire Emblem allows nearly twenty units in some battles! I think if you're going to have more than three of four characters in the player's control, you really need to spend a lot of time balancing the game out.

msw188 · Joined: 02 Jul 2003 Posts: 1041

I agree. But what can be done to make this party limit (1-6, as you suggest) make sense in terms of the game-world itself, without actually limiting the amount of playable characters?

Camdog · Joined: 08 Aug 2003 Posts: 606

You simply have to invent a reason in-story to explain this, like Chrono Trigger did. Fortunately, there are lots of ways to do this. You could have a variation on "this vehicle only holds so many" a la Chrono Trigger. You could make it neccessary for some party members to stay at the home base and guard against attacks from the evil empire/marauding mutant ponies/puffy yellow aliens/etc. You could force the party to split up and do different things when the party size got too big, and switch back and forth between the various part fragments. I would think there is basically unlimited ways to explain a party limit size, you just have to not be a lazy developer and include it.

P.S. Chrono Trigger is every bit a great RPG.

LeRoy_Leo · Posted: Mon May 15, 2006 11:11 am Post subject:

Oh ho! But you do not really have to accept this limitation, my friend. Make one hero who has a bunch of attacks. Each attack is actually a different hero that you can summon. You can summon anyone you want to, so as many attacks as you are allowed to have, you can use to summon the hero. And furthermore, because I realized that would only allow the hero to use one attack when summoned (unless you used a chain of attacks, which would be long and annoying), you can have the same hero's name in the attack list in different places. Each name would end with a - attack name next to their name so you can not only select the hero, but also select the attack he will use. But why stop there? You can have four of these groups on the field with the same or different groups in their spell list. So yeah... Using summons a different way. the hero graphic could be a group of people or even invisible.

I should throw a demo game together. I like this concept. o.o
And it's the gameathon, anyway. woot!
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Moogle1 · Posted: Tue May 16, 2006 8:23 am Post subject:

Did you read his post? This isn't what he's talking about. He's not complaining about the 4-party battle system.
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LeRoy_Leo · Posted: Tue May 16, 2006 10:23 am Post subject:

Dr. Baconman · Joined: 05 Mar 2006 Posts: 27 Location: The Base, TN

I personally enjoyed the system that Final Fantasy IV used, at least before the Babel Giant was introduced.
Apparantely, the number of characters in your party would match the number of characters that were able to adventure. There were many instances in which a fellow party member got seperated from you; through sickness, earthquakes, Leviathans, kidnappings, and suicidal Stoning.
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Of course, all of these were miraculously fixed by the end of the game so that players could choose who they wanted to play as... But the fact that everything just so happened to fix itself at once is just plain corny to me, and not a good option.

Iblis · Posted: Tue May 16, 2006 8:33 pm Post subject:

The Wobbler · Joined: 06 Feb 2003 Posts: 2221

msw188 · Joined: 02 Jul 2003 Posts: 1041

I never really understood that whole idea of 'summons'. Too often, they seem like lame excuses to have grand graphical effects for a spell that does the same sort of thing that a normal kind of spell would have done. It would be better if you could actually summon a character who becomes an independent character in the battle.

As for the story limiting the characters in your party, this is the easiest thing to accomplish logically, but it does leave something to be desired. I mean, it certainly destroys the idea of being able to 'pick' your party. The 'vehicle size' limitation is possibly the second easiest, but I'm really not aware of a game where it really made any sense to me. I recently thought of an idea that tries to allow some choice of your party, but keeps it limited to four: what if your party is comprised of four (or less) shape-shifters? They can change their shapes while not in the heat of battle (thus allowing the player some choices concerning his party), but they are still the same person. With the OHR's new plotscripting for EXP, this might not be too terribly difficult...

Camdog · Joined: 08 Aug 2003 Posts: 606

I think it's perhaps important to ask: why is it so important that there be an ironclad logical reason for a party limit size? I think we're all in agreement when we say the gameplay of traditional RPGs benefits from a limited party size. That seems tantamount to me, and I think most players would allow a little break in realism in exchange for the preservation of gameplay.

Yes, yes, I know your topic is about how to logically limit party size, not if there should be a logical reason, but reading the replies has gotten me to wondering if it should be considered that much at all. For example, your shapeshifting idea (while interesting), is there exclusively to explain away party size and maintain choice, but I kind of feel like it's a bad idea to base an entire game around the fix of a minor annoyance. A great story about shapeshifters is one thing, but a bunch of shapeshifters stuck into a game to clear a logic hump is quite another.

I guess what I'm saying is, if there's a valid story reason in the story to limit part size, by all means run with it. If there isn't, just limit party size anyway and don't bother with convoluted solutions at all. It's part of the game, so players will just have to deal with it.

Not trying to derail your topic, just musing on priorities...

msw188 · Joined: 02 Jul 2003 Posts: 1041

I agree completely about making gameplay override realism/logical consistency. But it is interesting to see if there are any simple ways to benefit both.

Mike Caron · Posted: Tue May 23, 2006 8:31 pm Post subject:

I think Final Fantasy VI is a good example of logically limiting the party size (at least, in the World of Balance anyway). For example, when you're heading to Vector for the first time, Locke and Celes are forced into the party, and you can choose two others. The rest stay in Narshe to help rebuild after the Empire's attacks.

Later, when you go searching for the Espers, your party of two + Locke + Shadow go huntin', while some of the rest go in another search party, while the rest stay in Vector, trying to see if the Empire is screwing you over (of course, they're the last to find out when they do, but that's beside the point).

All of this story reason aside, there's always the "we travel faster with smaller parties" thing, which holds true. RPGs like FF and the like involve travelling. Lots of it. So, having a relatively small party while the rest stay home is natural, since having 20 people travelling together will only slow you down, since you need 20 people's worth of supplies, etc etc (magical inventory notwithstanding).

Tactical RPGs can get around this, since the travelling is secondary, if it plays a role at all. In FFTA, it plays a tiny role, but then you only see Marche running around on the world map.

As for the OHR itself, the active party size is a memory limitation, but also a screen-space limitation. It's already pretty crowded in battle, and having more party members would mean that the existing heroes would be even more squished together.
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Gizmog1 · Posted: Wed May 24, 2006 1:03 am Post subject:

You know, that sort of gives me an idea. Could the number of people in the party, the equipment and supplies being carried by the party, and a "Speed" statistic be used to affect how fast the party travelled? I'm not sure to what effect this could possibly be fun, but the idea of unequipping everyone and having an effect similliar to sprint shoes sounds kind of intriguing. As does 4 knights walking through the woods, nearly invincible to enemy attacks, but taking forever to get anywhere (And getting attacked every two steps.).

To prevent having say, Jesse Owens and The Flash lead the party, whilst 30 Sumo Wrestlers in fullplate armor carrying a variety of appetizers and entrees on giant buffet tables at 600 miles per hour, I'd assume the party could only be as fast as it's slowest member.

But, who really want 500 members of the party? Random Encounters, only the first say, dozen or so would get to act, and in boss battles, it'd totally throw off any type of strategy you might have, because you'd have to act through some 30 or 40 characters to get back to your healer's and magic users. Sounds almost more like a collectible card game type thing.

The worst drawback I can see though, is attacks that hit all of your party. Imagine what a pain in the butt it is when a wizard casts "Fire!" on 4 members of your party. Imagine sitting through a minute and a half of each member of the party taking damage. And then having to burn a hundred tonics to get them all back to full health.

Whoever had the idea of Shapeshifters had a pretty good idea I think. You could limit their abilities by saying they can only shift into someone they've met. You could even make statistics for random townspeople, and give the player an option as playing in their image. When you get to higher levels, you'd probably have met stronger people, and be able to assume their form.