[Tenshi]

- Should I use the traditional party system, or perhaps should I utilize a "switch" system, such as in Breath of Fire (GBA) or FInal Fantasy X, where you have all of your characters available to you, and you can switch them in and out during battle?
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- Jaeda

[MisterFrosty]

My general sentiment is that I hate being asked to form my own party. Generally games that make such a request end up becoming shallow on the char-development side (WoR FF3, Suikoden, etc.). My ideal is simply to have a fixed party and no switching. But if it's between pick-your-own and switch-in, I'd go with the latter.

[EDIT]

What about having inactive party members provide "support"? For example, the old NES game "Destiny of an Emperor" (fantastic game with a great battle engine, solid writing, and gorgeous music) had one character assigned to be your "strategist" and his intelligence rating affected the strength of your magical attacks (or tactics as they were called).

Every character could have a couple of "passive" abilities -- maybe one jumps in to provide extra damage on critical attacks, another increases your odds of running away, another heals you each turn, another reduces magic costs, etc. That way, even chars not directly involved in battle are nonetheless contributing. Switch-in always seemed forced to me.

[Sirocco]

I don't have the time to post as frequently as I used to, so this should be interesting :) This is probably a little long-winded, so feel free to ignore this if you either don't need or don't want to read my spew.

Personally, I've always enjoyed forming my own party, as opposed to having a fixed party, or working with a 'switch' system. I like making decisions, and it provides a slightly different tone for the game -- I'll expand on that in just a moment.

From a design standpoint, you need to make a definite assertion (the earlier the better, IMO) as to how much flexibility you want the player to have. If you want to force the player to make decisions and stand by them, take a look at the standard party system. If, on the other hand, you want to avoid forcing the player into possibly difficult decisions, the 'switch' method may very well be more appropriate.

Ultimately, it'd behoove you to make the choice that best suits the tone and flow of your game. It helps to treat combat as a natural part of the game experience, as opposed to it being considered a separate element you can change on a whim.


This is a short case study, ignore if you want:

There's a good reason I chose a traditional party system for FB, as opposed to something more unique. The game itself places a large emphasis on forcing the player to make difficult decisions, and then dealing with the choices -- sometimes things work out well, at other times, well... the main point being I took the path that suited my needs :)

More importantly, FB takes on a mission-based structure instead of the traditional "let's all get together and participate in the grand adventure" flow. This means that the various characters will generally spend their time in small groups in diverse locations accomplishing their assignments. This forces the player to manage resources: sending your strong characters away on an extended mission may make things difficult when an emergency situation arises.

The player will also need to take character strengths and weaknesses into consideration when forming a mission party -- why take a strong fighter and healer along for a recon mission when you also have to address an assault mission at the same time? There are few occasions when more than four characters are in the same location, so the traditional four PC setup holds up well.

BOF IV, for example, takes the aforementioned approach, i.e. having everyone travel together, so it makes sense to have a switching system in place. The emphasis is on game play itself rather than planning and execution, so it works well.


Well, that was fun ^.^

[mandrake_is_yomomma]

[Tenshi]

- Hmm, and now for some thought. The way the game is structured, either method would work. Now, it's not to say that all characters would be available at all times of the story. It'd be that maybe if you split into groups of two or three, all the characters in that group would be available for switch-out, which may only be 4 characters, or 5. But it'd probably be more sensible because then it wouldn't necessarily mean that a party of 5 has to be split into a party of 3 + 2.

- As for MisterFrosty's suggestion (one of them), adding attributes to each character would increase the level of complexity far beyond what I already have. While I think it's an awesome (and more realistic) suggestion, I don't want to go overboard on this project.

- I'll let the poll run for a little further and then decide. =T
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- Jaeda

[MisterFrosty]

Mandrake -- Shining Force 1 and 2 had nothing like what Sirocco described. Final Fantasy Tactics had a goofy quest thing that was something like it, but not really. I'd say the closest thing I can think of is Final Fantasy III's system for the Phoenix Cave, but that doesn't seem as interesting as Sir's suggestion.

[Tenshi]

- Parties it is.
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- Jaeda