[General Discussion] RPG Elements: Characters

So this came up in another thread and I suppose it'll make a good discussion.

As far as characters go, would you rather Fully Customizable, Completely Unique, or a somewhere down the middle?

I like the best of both worlds since each character still has some defining traits within battle so there's some reason to use them since they offer something that nobody else has. My all time favorite game: Final Fantasy VI offers this type because while every character can be outfitted with magic, characters have unique abilities outside of magic. Sabin has Blitz, Edgar has Tools, Terra has Morph, Celes has Runic, Locke can Steal, and so on.

Being Completely Unique, IMO, makes every character VERY defined, but can cause troubles at certain parts of the game, and makes it somewhat harder if you lack a certain ability or whatnot. Having Fully Customizable characters makes the game significantly easier and in battle, no single character stands out anymore.

Opinions?

Jam it back in, in the dark.

Completely individual is the way to go. I don't mind if there are two similar "healers" or two similar "offensive magic users" in the pool of available characters, but if every character can learn healing magic, then where's the challenge in selecting the right party?

I'd rather have characters who can develop with customised skills and stats, but only within the boundaries of their defined role. If both of the "healers" in the game are slightly different, that also adds to the challenge of party selection.

I'd like to win or lose a boss battle based on which party I picked. Not how high my levels are.

How ya doing, buddy?

A bit of both, definitely. I like the FFT styling of this much more than the FFVI type though. I like games in which you can do basically anything you want with the characters, but no single character can do everything.

- WraithTwo -

This thing is sticky, and I don't like it. I don't appreciate it.

Final Fantasy Tactics is the game that every other game needs to be like. You've got your regular foot soldiers and your unique characters nearly all of which are fully customizable. The jewel on the crown is the limitation of what can be taken to the battlefield. Had FFT allowed a single character to bring every ability to the battlefield it would have been ridiculous which is why it's unfortunate when a great game like FFXII uses such a silly tradition. It's really very basic. Don't use it!

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When games have fully customizable characters, the system tends to be way too generic for my taste. I don't like the idea of one character potentially being a carbon copy of another at the end when everything is mastered. I liked V though. VII and VIII had limit breaks to distinguish, so no matter how much you customize, Squall won't have Angel Wing or Selphie will never Armageddon Fist, which makes me like those characters as well.

I like a bit of both. It's sort of demanding in games where characters are rigidly defined, but if they pull it exceedingly well like Earthbound, SMRPG, etc. Then I'm indifferent. 7th Saga is an example of why I don't like clear cut "this is your character whether you like it or not" kind of play so much, especially since strengths and weaknesses are blatantly obvious amongst characters (Lux guarding, Esuna healing, etc.).

I was speaking idiomatically.

I've always enjoyed the job system, and materia is aces as well, so I guess that makes me a customization man.
Individual characters just make me hate not being able to use certain characters because their skillsets suck ass. =/

What kind of toxic man-thing is happening now?

I tend to like challenging RPGs, so having fully-customizable characters makes it difficult for me to choose unique abilities for each one if the system gives too much freedom. I'd likely just make copies of a powerful character and use that party until the end. But a game is interesting with the option to add things to characters as well.

That said, I suppose I'd go with a system that has a little bit of both. A game can be fun for me if I know that only one character has a unique ability that would benefit the entire party in a battle.

FELIPE NO

I like defined character types with a few choices on down the path. One of my favorite RPG character systems is where a character is some basic class, say theif, swordsman, mage, and then on down the road on a level plateau, you get the option to subclass them. Such as swordsman getting the option to become either Knight, Berserker, or Samurai. Then there's usually a few hidden subclasses if you get that certain sword from that certain dungeon. I love that. Ragnarok Online and Ogre Tactics are examples of it that come to my mind.

What, you don't want my bikini-clad body?

In my opinion system used in FFV (and later FFT) was absolutely brilliant. As instead of having pre-defined classes assigned to certain character each player could make something like custom class combining the most interesting parts of original jobs. This also makes the game more demanding I think (depending on the player) since simply leveling up won't do here any good. As there are many character development paths to take and not every one will work in every situation.

Jam it back in, in the dark.

I generally prefer character development that's somewhere down the middle. Like, it's cool that everyone in a given party can learn a certain technique, but it's nice to see that some characters are strictly better than others at doing some things.

That's one thing that bothered me about FFX. It was such a good idea, but so poorly implemented; it really made no sense for your little white mage Yuna to go around laying the smackdown harder than your 8-foot tall tank. It would have been cool to see that even after all that massive overlevelling, she still sucked at beating people in comparison to Auron.

How ya doing, buddy?

See, that's the thing about FFX, in order to give your characters what you wanted, you had to have the right number of spheres, just to get from one place to another. Then you had the spheres where you could learn the skills of another character. This can get interesting.

Yuna was the "white" mage, and Lulu the "black" mage. Yet, you could have Lulu learn "Pray" to heal the members, and Yuna could learn "Fire" for attack purposes. But, having only one summoner made the game challenging. FFX let you change characters that were ready to go as soon as they entered the fight. This way, your party was forever changing, and you really didn't need to share skills or spells--but some of them were what I considered "necessary" sharers...

Anyway....I prefer games where the characters have a base, yet can be customized. For example, Suikoden. Viktor is one of the characters who is a swordsman. He is mainly a heavy fighter. HOWEVER, he has the ability to use magic when a rune is equipped on him, but he can't use all the levels. THAT's the kind of customization I like. It makes you think how you want to deal with these people.

This thing is sticky, and I don't like it. I don't appreciate it.

Good poll, this is one of my favourite things to discuss about RPGs.

Certainly with single-played RPGs I would definitely rather have an entirely customisable character (not just abilities, I get annoyed if I can't choose mundane things like sex, hair colour and clothes). If the game is made well, you don't lose anything in the story, and you feel about as much empathy for them as you can possibly get.

When it comes to RPGs where you control a whole party, I am in two minds. On the one hand, I did greatly appreciate Final Fantasy IV's system of unique characters, but that was helped by the fact that you were never given a choice of what character to use. In addition, I also liked Final Fantasy IX's system, despite the choice of characters I found myself using most of them at one point or another.

Final Fantasy X was actually an interesting hybrid, as the character development changed depending on which Sphere Grid you used. The normal Sphere Grid ensured that each party member developed unique abilities for most of the game, and the enhanced Sphere Grid allowed everyone to go in whatever direction they wanted to.

Character Development is also the area where I think Final Fantasy VII and VIII fall down most. The Junction system both games have (yes, I know it's called Materia in VII, but it's essentially the same system in both games), was deeply flawed in my opinion. It leads people to keep swapping instant abilities to their three favourite characters and, as I once demonstrated, the player just plays the entire game using three characters. Indeed, Final Fantasy VII is the only game in the series to force you to use specific characters at points just to make sure you use everyone. The end result feels somewhat forced and makes the game less fun to play.

With Final Fantasy XII, every character is customisable, but each have innate strengths and weaknesses. Penelo, for example, is three times as strong at using magic than Basch, and her attack power is calculated from her speed, so it makes sense to equip her with a dagger and spend license points on lots of magic. Granted, should you so wish, you can level up enough to give everyone every single ability, but it's a more interesting game to, with the option of customising every character.

Balthier became the clear party leader who used a gun to hit the enemy from a distance, ensuring every battle was pre-emptive, Fran was an expert at ranged weapons, Basch was a tank who only used magic when he was buffing up the party for boss battles, Penelo was a speedy and formidable mage, Ashe was a paladin who had a knack for restoring the entire party just before it was completely wiped out, and Vaan was a pure and simple thief who stole from every enemy he saw.

Personally, I think it would be interesting to see unique party members in a fixed size of party. This would allow you to pick up different characters and thus change the strategy for each play through. I know it's unlikely with the next game being spearheaded by Nomura though.

I am a dolphin, do you want me on your body?

Going to argue about FFVIII's Junction system. Some characters had a higher affinity for GFs than others, so their attacks were stronger. So, in essence, you didn't need to use the same three characters.

I was speaking idiomatically.

I said both...Fully customizable is lame. You might as well have four 'bots out there that all look and think the same on their own and need you to hold their hand. You should want individual abilities and having to compensate for strong magic with weak armor and no attack power...That's one of the few gameplay-related strengths JRPG's have. I mean, if I'm getting to the halfway point and my wizard isn't pulling her weight and dying every step, I need to find a replacement (sorry Celine). So I'd say unique (innate abilities, ability to combo with others) with elements of customization (materia, espers). My ideal preperation system is the one in Suikoden V: Individual character strengths and combos and mostly ways to customize their stengths (but you can also do other things). And that's on top of the whole fact you're running six characters on an ingenious formation set-up. Unfortunately, the game is fairly easy if you know what you're doing...I had far more fun prepping for battle than actually participating.

What kind of toxic man-thing is happening now?

I like through the middle most of the time myself. Right now I'm really enjoying FFV's job system with it's characters. They all have slightly different stats but the jobs give them some leeway to do better in whatever area you want them to get better at. I also like to walk the path were characters are fully custimizable ala Disgaea and many other NIS SRPGs. I like being able to make a character start out as say a wizard and after he's gotten a few levels I can recreate him to become a warrior who has some spells. I didn't quite like how FFVII handled it when you could buy multiple materia and have everyone have the same magic and abilities when you end up doing the same thing with every character.

FELIPE NO

I definitely like to err on the side of everyone not being able to do everything, healing is usually the key... if everyone can heal then it almost doesn't matter what else they can do. FFXII was a little disappointing in this regard, to start off your characters will probably vary somewhat, but as you start to get more and more lp, your characters will become more and more similar (I still have a few artificial restrictions in place in my game, just because it seems "wrong" to get certain abilities for certain characters).

What, you don't want my bikini-clad body?

I know what you mean about Final Fantasy XII. I know they probably lowered the difficulty level so that people who weren't used to the fighting system wouldn't find it impossible, but I wish that they'd added an Expert mode for people who really wanted a challenge. Compared to Neverwinter Nights 2, Final Fantasy XII was a doddle.

Jam it back in, in the dark.

I don't care for games where characters are fully customizable, since then they have very little difference between them. Having defined roles makes choosing your party lineup much more important, and it helps me to actually care about the characters.

I remember playing FF VIII, and I essentially abandoned Quistis and Selphie as soon as I got them. They were around lvl. 13 at endgame, because they were essentially pointless. Limit breaks alone aren't enough to distinguish characters from each other. Some games do manage it well though. Shin Megami Tensei: Digital Devil Saga was a great example of this. Aside from their innate elements for strength/weakness and what they cast slightly better than other characters, abilities were totally in the hands of the player. The only path that you tried to learn with everyone was at least basic healing. There was so much to learn though, that all of your people stayed pretty seperate, and the key was what abilities you equipped them with for battle. Since status, healing, attack magic, physical skills, and elemental voiding spells were all very important in DDS it was hard to decide on just a few skills for each person to bring into battle, and those decisions made the difference between being crushed by a boss or breezing through. Not to mention characters' weaknesses possibly giving enemies extra hits if you brought the wrong people.

Completely unique characters can be good too, but then they always leave me feeling sketchy about leaving certain people out of my party. Using FF IV as an example, I hate leaving Rydia out. She's a good black mage with summoning abilities, so exchanging her for Polom leaves me worried about the lack of healing/mass damage. There are times when I'd really like to bring Kain in for Jumping, yet Yang is a better fighter. It's the same with Tales of the Abyss. Guy has roughly the same abilities as the main character, so he ends up being left out most of the time, and the two healers in the party just get swapped out every so often, since their attacks that seperate them don't matter very much. Ditching good characters just because they have no real way of distinguishing through a little customization can be a real pain. It just feels a little too restrictive at times.

FF VI was a great example of having customizable characters through learning magic, while keeping them seperate. Honestly, who took Edgar out of their party unless they were looking for a challenge? It always made you question leaving Locke out, because what if a boss had some great item you'd miss out on without a thief? Having a little bit of control over how characters developed while still keeping some restrictions to seperate them is definitely the best way to go for me.

There's nowhere I can't reach.

I would say that in any game with a definitive main character, for example Planescape: Torment, that character should always be entirely customisable. I dislike being made to play a character in what is supposed to be an immersive game and then not having total control over what that character can and cannot do.

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I like a bit of both. I don't think completely unique is horrible by any means, but sometimes that can be annoying and it's nice to be able to pick out some things for your characters. I don't like fully customizable characters for the most part. Sometimes it can be interesting, but I like it more when a character's fighting style ties in with their role in the plot.

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