ITT unsolved game design issues
>RPG with a party mechanic
>there are more companions than party member slots
>new companion joins you during the game while your party is full
>no reason to try their weak ass out compared to the squad that was already working
>RPG with a party mechanic
Found your problem. Hope this helps fix your game design issue.
>make game open world
>solves issue
>give other character a cooler design
>solves issue
>make character better
>solves issue
encourage swapping in combat
many rpgs do this
delete your post, NOW!
post 5
The entirety of SMT.
More like only in Persona. I have never had to swap anyone mid fight in any other SMT
And how do they do that? By wasting your turn in order to swap?
FFX, one of the most popular jrpgs, doesn't waste a turn while doing this
but some do thus its a solved issue
DELETE YOUR THREAD NOW
this is why ff12 is the greatest game ever made, you can just swap teammates or equipment instantly as many times as you want through any battle
I have played even old rpgs where the game just scales the level of the party member to the parties or exp is shared across the party helping them catch up. I have no idea how people come up with opinions this moronic
many don't do that
Honestly I can't think of a game where later party members are all shit and FFT sure isn't an example of it. The closest thing I can think of is Valkyrie Profile on Hard Mode but that is mostly because they start at level 1 and the starting party in that game is fairly top tier by endgame standards before you get the seraphic gate folk
FF2US solved this long ago by using story elements to remove party member(s) when the party gets full and add member(s) when it's not full. You don't have the option of swapping manually.
You don't have a modicum of curiousity or interest in trying to find new synergies with that party member? Also new party members generally tend to have stronger abilities. I typically find it way more common that you stop using old party members. Like Genis in Tales of Symphonia.
Having too many party members AND no EXP share much less any mechanics to swap mid-fight is just bad design.
Berwick Saga solved this.
>exp gains are fairly low
>exp gains are greatly affected by how many levels higher/lower you are than an enemy so grinding out a small team of units will cause you to gain barely any exp on them and inversly untrained units catch up quickly
>even when you level up the growth rates are low and there's also a bracketing system to prevent people from repeatedly getting insane level ups (also prevents save scumming to minmax stats)
>each character you recruit has a set of skills so even though some characters may use the same types of weapons they all have gimmicks they can do that others can't
>the game throws multiple different situations at you throughout the story allowing some characters to shine which incentivises you to try them out if you haven't already done so
>exp gains are fairly low
>exp gains are greatly affected by how many levels higher/lower you are than an enemy so grinding out a small team of units will cause you to gain barely any exp on them and inversly untrained units catch up quickly
>even when you level up the growth rates are low and there's also a bracketing system to prevent people from repeatedly getting insane level ups (also prevents save scumming to minmax stats)
sounds awful
Levels really don't mean much in Berwick Saga and while it sounds bad on paper but it prevents you from using like 5 characters and snowballing with them. You get a unit at the start of the game who has a way higher level than the rest of your squad who will probably only level up once during the entire game but he carries hard in the start of the game and is still relevant in the endgame. It might sound like using the same units is pointless but you train their weapon ranks instead which makes them more accurate so there is some merit to training your units.
well shit, sounds like Kaga should have just made a tactics game like Advance wars if he was gonna de-incentivize levels and stats so much
that's why you need perm death
>RPG where you create your character to be any class
>the class you pick has anti-synergy with the classes of the party members you like
>end up having to bring along characters you don't like to not make combat suck
Happened to me in Kingmaker, made my character a pretty vanilla backline alchemist, turns out all the cool party members are backliners and I have to leave them behind to take bland ass Valerie and Harrim all the time
>jarpig
>shit game design
you don't say
Plenty of games that give you a new party member whose level is close to yours or will be yours in a battle or two
What do you think about a scenario where you have to compose few different parties, each of them going on their own quest?
You send human ranger, elf archer and dwarf warrior to get help from undead army, your two thieves for a main quest and your wizard to solo/power level to get a promotion.
There is a game that solves this, vallyrie profile on the PS1 where party members matter because it’s about populating Valhalla with strong characters within x amount of time. Go check it out.
If the game is hard enough, your squad isn't going to work after a certain point and you are encouraged to make changes. Or maybe it will work, but in that case you can try another squad in your next playthrough.
I don't mind them overflowing you with party members as long as they do it early on and properly give you time to experiment.
It's only a problem when it's the last couple hours of the game and your gameplan has been set and solid for 30-40 hours. When that happens it's hard to even imagine what the frick they were thinking. Why so fricking late?
Chained Echoes does this TWICE, and that's a game that encourages finding a "flow state" when it comes to party building, which makes it even worse to try and replace right before the last dungeon. What the frick were they thinking?
It's quite simple. Just make the new party member's skill set completely invalidate one of the current party members.
the only problem with Makoto replacing Morgana is that Morgana's social link is fixed so he can't get his upgraded persona until near the end of the game. if you could get it earlier he would be a solid pick, lucky punch is insanely good.
Even if Morgana could unlock Mercurius earlier, he still falls short because of how much Makoto has going for her.
>doesn't overspecialize in healing like morgana
>passively boosts ailment chances by existing, nuclear damage also gets technicals off of burn, freeze, and shock so her element synergizes with supporting other party members
>rakukaja is more useful than sukunda
>gets a severe tier spell while morgana is stuck with heavy
>can't confirm either way but it electric damage seems way more common than psy damage so her weakness is a moot point
Personally I never saw the point of the high crit attacks in 5, it's usually better to go for the weakness, and if that's not an option try to inflict an ailment using guns or a spell to get technical damage.
Crits are basically weakness attacks independent of vulnerabilities, aren't they?
They're still subject to null, reflect and drain. I don't know if resist prevents crits like it does in SMTV so I will assume it doesn't. Crits are naturally more risky than ailments as well.
>go for a crit with morgana using lucky punch
>don't crit and enemy gets a turn in, morgana is more likely to die since you just spent hp to attack
>go for an ailment with a gun
>have multiple attempts at landing it since every ailment modification gives a gun at least 2-3 bullets (aside from haru)
>if an enemy nulls gun just use agi, bufu, or zio to try for the ailment
Crits are fine and can work, but ailments generally are more consistent.
unironically gachas giving exp in the form of items solved this
I played BG1 and that just made new characters the average level of your other party members.
The problem was that if you met someone early on, and then dropped them, when you came back their level wouldn't change so you'd be substantially overleveled.
Nuke Washington DC. There Problem solved
Only FFIV did this well
In it, classes are tied to characters who join and leave because of the story, you can't chose the party members, you have to adapt
>pros
No waste
>cons
No customization, railroading, no replayability in essence
Otherwise just let you create the party from scratch like DQ3, lots of replayability but not much change during 1 playthrough.
The 3D remake lets you equip augments, which unlock specific commands. Certain high-end augments are only acquired by giving augments to party members before they leave.
I'm glad other games level up all party members, even the ones not in the current squad. Having to grind in order to level up the members that you don't use is a tedious chore.
This would be easy, simply assign that new member a random level between your lowest level member and your highest level member
I like catchup mechanics, e.g. the way SaGa or Trails did it, you still choose who to develop but but you can raise multiple people easily because lower level characters climb up extremely quickly
Just make an RPG with like 20 party slots and massive enemy battles to match. This is not a problem, Chess exists.
That's just Fire Emblem/Shining Force/Feda, though.
FE5 had fatigue, which means some of your units get too tired to field if you use them too much but people cried about it.
Tyranny, I played recently, actually had all the characters be a little higher level than your party when you recruit them (although, I didn't use trainers so that might be why)
They should do the opposite effect, where the characters you barely use have a charge meter which refills more and more the less you use them, making them more effective in battle when you do start using them, with the charge meter refilling faster for the characters which are more underleveled than others.
>>no reason to try their weak ass out compared to the squad that was already working
Very few RPGs start a new party member lower leveled
The more common issue is if the game has class levels separate from the character they might be behind there
Could be solved by just giving them the average EXP of the rest of the party up to that point