[Suikoden] is still dead, long live Suikoden

I'm ready go tonight. There's a party, alright. We don't need the raisin for joy, oh yeah. Tick down to midnight.
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True Perception
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Re: [Suikoden] is still dead, long live Suikoden

Post by True Perception » Tue Oct 09, 2018 7:42 pm

Come on! You know Bluti would grind Pirate Snowe from 1 star to maxed out before anyone else.

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Bier_Engel
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Re: [Suikoden] is still dead, long live Suikoden

Post by Bier_Engel » Tue Oct 09, 2018 8:23 pm

No lie...

But FEH is also the only gatcha game I've ever really played so I didn't realize 6 stars were even an option.

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Re: [Suikoden] is still dead, long live Suikoden

Post by DHerder222 » Tue Oct 09, 2018 8:27 pm

If FEH doesn't have them yet, they probably will soon. The model of almost every gacha is to continuously roll out stronger units to keep people grinding.

Final Fantasy Brave Exvius recently debuted 7-stars to both joy and eyerolls.

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Re: [Suikoden] is still dead, long live Suikoden

Post by True Perception » Tue Oct 09, 2018 8:32 pm

Come on, 108-star Sonya Cat!

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Delthazar
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Re: [Suikoden] is still dead, long live Suikoden

Post by Delthazar » Wed Oct 10, 2018 5:08 am

DHerder222 wrote:
Tue Oct 09, 2018 8:27 pm
If FEH doesn't have them yet, they probably will soon. The model of almost every gacha is to continuously roll out stronger units to keep people grinding.
I don't see 6-star units appearing in FEH until they run out of characters, run out of existing characters to shove into seasonal costumes, or run out of other mechanical ways to develop 5-stars, which is what systems like the Weapon Refinery is for. Also the whole concept of 40+ merges.

Adding a whole new star tier would require completely rebalancing the game from the ground up and that's super unlikely compared to adding relatively simple new progression systems for what's already there. 'sides, with a new mainline Fire Emblem coming in 2019, that's another few dozen characters coming in along with it.

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Re: [Suikoden] is still dead, long live Suikoden

Post by Delthazar » Wed Oct 10, 2018 5:56 am

Anyway. Franchises like Wild Arms, Arc the Lad, and... Popolocrois, what? ...all seem to have gacha games going on either right now or soon, and all of those are just as dead as Suikoden if not more so, maybe even with smaller remaining fanbases, so the only thing keeping Konami from pushing out a FEH clone or whatever is Konami, same as always.

Layfield's right though: anyone getting their hopes up or droppin' speculation just because of a random PSN sale or a website refresh of all things, well, woof, y'all do y'all, I guess. But Konami couldn't even make Metal Gear Survive work, in the games-as-service sense, or any other sense, really, and with a lot more money to play with there, so unless yer really into not-FIFA football games...

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Re: [Suikoden] is still dead, long live Suikoden

Post by DHerder222 » Wed Oct 31, 2018 5:01 pm

I've been thinking a lot about that GURPS project I worked on a few years back for Suikoden. I was really enjoying it but GURPS' inherent limitations caused me to burnout faster than I might have otherwise (plus, uh, laziness :pacdown)

But since I'm in a period where I have a decent amount of free time, maybe I should try something like that again. It really would be great to have a database of all canon characters designed under the same ruleset.

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Re: [Suikoden] is still dead, long live Suikoden

Post by Falcon Critical » Wed Oct 31, 2018 5:34 pm

We need someone to make a Suikoden: Heroes game for mobile. As much fun as FEH is, I never played FE before this so Suikoden is my FE.

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Re: [Suikoden] is still dead, long live Suikoden

Post by Bier_Engel » Wed Oct 31, 2018 5:59 pm

Yeah, that would work out nicely with all the characters. Plus, Snowe would have like 4 alt ideas right off the bat!

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Re: [Suikoden] is still dead, long live Suikoden

Post by Delthazar » Wed Oct 31, 2018 6:00 pm

Yep, a Snowe alt for every aching limb!

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Re: [Suikoden] is still dead, long live Suikoden

Post by DHerder222 » Wed Oct 31, 2018 6:27 pm

Okay, here's the first major question: Would such a game be solely unit-based where you form a squad of 4-6 single characters? Or would it be a large-scale army builder where you have characters leading/assisting battalions? Or something in between, or something else entirely?

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Re: [Suikoden] is still dead, long live Suikoden

Post by True Perception » Wed Oct 31, 2018 8:04 pm

If done correctly, it would mostly be 6-person battles, but also have events where you are doing war battles (bonus points for allowing multiple styles of war battle) and duels. Hell, even the story mode battles should swap between these. Maybe, a war battle to start a chapter, and a duel to end it? You could even do a large scale battle, where each player runs their own 6-person squad, adding up to a full battle across all players. That could replace the Arena.

Edit: Ooh, and you could select a favorite unit to act as "Tenkai", since it would not need to be truly Tenkai led, since it's not a main story game.

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Re: [Suikoden] is still dead, long live Suikoden

Post by DHerder222 » Wed Oct 31, 2018 8:24 pm

Nice! I really like the idea of characters being usable in three different ways - Duel, Squad and Army.

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Re: [Suikoden] is still dead, long live Suikoden

Post by DHerder222 » Fri Nov 02, 2018 9:32 am

Random thoughts:

-Most gacha RPGs specify the type of weapons each character can use. Suikoden famously kept the same weapon on a character the entire game, with you upgrading it instead of swapping out more powerful weapons as you went along. Maybe a gacha game would allow you to attach modifiers to a weapon, such as an elemental affinity or various stat boosts.

-Gacha RPGs usually give characters a Pokemon-like element. Suikoden does this too, their five elemental structure is fairly consistent (though more prevalent in some games than others). The big question is whether you could create Holy and Darkness categories for folks like Leknaat and Yuber, or just give them one of the five natural elements.

-Unite attacks could be tough because gacha RPGs quickly balloon to hundreds of playable characters, and the likelihood of two or more characters being both thematically connected *and* strong enough to want to use in your party is slim. Maybe the Unites could be more group-based - for example, any 2- or 3-person combination of Geddoe, Queen, Joker, Ace and Jacques will perform the same ability.

-The HQ could easily be the centerpiece of such a game, with your HQ having literally dozens of potential shops and features. Two issues: Mobile games aren't usually designed for mini-games, and you can't really tie shops to specific characters since every user will have a different slate. A gacha would probably have to focus on the design aspect of your HQ and maybe some low-key unlockable features.

I know, I know. I need to get a life. :pacdown

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Re: [Suikoden] is still dead, long live Suikoden

Post by True Perception » Fri Nov 02, 2018 3:07 pm

Hmm. Holy sounds wrong for Leknaat. More like Arcane, or atleast, Balance. Holy would be more of Fukien's thing. Or, Gantetsu, I guess. Kahn. (Edit: Totally missed that opportunity. Oh well.)

I'd lean more towards Chaos and Balance, though. Fits the theme better.

I don't care if the in-game teams don't work in this supposed Gacha. I'm running teams, dammit! I'd honestly prefer if they kept unites character specific. Plus, it would give people more incentive to spend money to get certain characters. Also, early on, they would want to not announce who had Unites, so people would speculate and gamble on spending more dough to get matches that feel feasible. Hmm... I'm thinking like a corporate stooge. I need to stop that.

Ooh, that HQ bit brings up an interesting thought: Non-battle characters. I'd think it best that they still be random draws, but have a system of assigning them to a team as support, or enhancing your defenses in some way. For example, having the armorer present gives all characters a +2 to defense. That sort of thing.

Nah. Your life is here. Accept it.

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Re: [Suikoden] is still dead, long live Suikoden

Post by DHerder222 » Fri Nov 02, 2018 3:54 pm

I guess you're all stuck here with me, so I can live with that. :pac

Good call on elements. Order and Chaos has a better sound to me but either would work and, as you said, do much of the same thing while being more Suikoden-y.

You've got a good point about character-locked Unites possibly leading to more money being spent. But in the real games they rarely become all that necessary or powerful, so people might end up ignoring them anyway. Unless Unites were made really powerful, the devs could probably make either method work.

Definitely a "yes" on assigning non-battle characters as support, that was always fun in the later games and you could even give support characters their own leveling system. But no on drawing them - the best gacha games have only one category of random draws. More and it leads to frustration when the type you just spent currency on doesn't even get drawn, let alone the exact thing you were hoping for. I would have support characters purchasable with in-game currency, likely unlocking on a timed system as your overall rank increases.

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Re: [Suikoden] is still dead, long live Suikoden

Post by Falcon Critical » Fri Nov 02, 2018 11:29 pm

The way unites work in KOF98 UM OL is if you have both characters alive in your party, whenever one of them does an ULT, they do their combo ULT. This happens every time until one of them is downed. They have it limited to just some characters (Robert/Ryo), but I could totally see that kind of effect on a Riou/Nanami pair.

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Re: [Suikoden] is still dead, long live Suikoden

Post by DHerder222 » Sun Nov 04, 2018 10:28 am

Yeah, I could see that working.

Hmmm...Most gacha RPGs categorize units by general type - Attacker, Defender, Healer, etc. I don't think any of the Suikoden games used those kinds of specific definitions, but it probably wouldn't be too hard to create them for a mobile game.

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Re: [Suikoden] is still dead, long live Suikoden

Post by Bier_Engel » Sun Nov 04, 2018 10:32 am

Well, some of the games had the option of placing a character in the front, middle or back of the formation. Frontline people can be attackers, people you'd place in the back could be either healers or defenders.

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Re: [Suikoden] is still dead, long live Suikoden

Post by True Perception » Sun Nov 04, 2018 11:05 am

That does raise an interesting point: What to do with magic-fighters? I guess you could have a mage-type Flik and a warrior-type Flik, or you could assign a high damage lightning attack as a charged special.

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Re: [Suikoden] is still dead, long live Suikoden

Post by Falcon Critical » Sun Nov 04, 2018 11:48 am

Yeah hybrid classes would be tough, I'd probably turn Flik into a lightning sword unit that just empowers his blows rather than casting and hitting.

Defenders: Humphrey, Pesmerga, Viktor, Rikimaru, all heavy armor and meat shield types
Attackers: Tenkais, Fire/Lightning/Wind mages, most fighters
Healers: Water/Earth mages, Vikis

If you leave the three classes vague enough you can fit pretty much any archetype into one of them. Whether you'd denote someone as a Wind mage by their default equipped rune or their aptitude with that element could go either way.

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Re: [Suikoden] is still dead, long live Suikoden

Post by DHerder222 » Sun Nov 04, 2018 11:58 am

I like that, and you could even have a Balanced category for characters who don't obviously fit one of those molds.

Regarding Bluti's comment, I'd probably do a traditional 2x3 grid and have it set so that the only way a back row character can be physically attacked is if the character immediately in front of them is KO'd (or the attack hits everyone). I think that'd be a happy medium of how much importance goes in to character placements.

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Re: [Suikoden] is still dead, long live Suikoden

Post by Falcon Critical » Sun Nov 04, 2018 4:32 pm

It's a shame Konami isn't SNK in terms of licencing, or this might actually be possible.

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Re: [Suikoden] is still dead, long live Suikoden

Post by DHerder222 » Sun Nov 04, 2018 6:04 pm

Are you enjoying the SNK game? I don't know much but the Youtube videos I watched look entertaining.

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Re: [Suikoden] is still dead, long live Suikoden

Post by Falcon Critical » Sun Nov 04, 2018 7:53 pm

On my channel? It's fine for a mobile game. It's suuuper gacha like you gotta whale to be proper competitive. It bums me out because there are so few boss ladies and since bosses release once a month it's all about the grind (so far there have been 15 male and 2 female bosses).

It's your FEH style collect-a-thon mixed with a hardcore grind where it takes months to get fighters up to competitive levels which means for the most part people hear what is good and everyone runs the same teams. Also there are meta-enabling fighters who make your team more defensive to the point where if you're not running one of the noted 'formations' you're just going to lose to similar or weaker opponents.

The main raisin I stick with it (other than the community/discord) is that there are different versions in China, Japan, Southeast Asia and they're all a year or more ahead of us... so we can see what fighters are coming even if we don't know the exact order they'll appear. Knowing what is ahead gives a clear target at least. Currently at 350 days, which is about a third as long as I played Marvel Puzzle Quest :pac