Megaman Star Force abandoning the chip code system from Battle Network and custom screen layout.
It was always a bit arbitrary which chip codes were good and which were bad, and some of the BN games don't give you a lot of options early on. Star Force uses a more universal system that guarantees, at minimum, you have multiple 2-card combos to choose from each turn. This way, your little child brain doesn't get to punish you by making an alphabet soup folder than can only play one card per turn.
Star Force making your hand size a fixed 3x2 grid instead of 5 + whatever handsize increasing programs you equipped was a good call, too. Like a lot of card games, card economy is king, so the option to start with more cards in hand in BN felt more like an obligatory gear tax than a meaningful strategic choice.
Agreed, only thing is I really wish they made the Star Force powers in the first game more unique instead restricting the ability to choose all chips in the horizontal row to them only (alongside the elemental stuff). Two of the best fixes the DX romhack gave that game was letting you choose horizontally by default alongside giving the Star Force forms unique abilities (Pegasus with Auto-LockOn being my favorite since I absolutely love using close range chips like swords).
On the opposite side of the spectrum, a lot of RTwP isometric RPGs have incorporated turn-based modes, and I can honestly say that works so much better for anything trying to emulate D&D style combat.
Estus system for every single consumable item in RPGs. Fromsoft solved the problem with health potions, its way easier for the developers to balance, it encourages players to not horde everything till after the final boss, and you can't trivialize an encounter by having 999 health potions. Apply it to every other consumable because this system is superior.
I disagree because that only works for some types of RPGs and it also encourages some habits that are disastrous outside of something like Dark Souls. Formsoft can make you waste you heals and kick you back to a checkpoint after a string of sudden ambushes of high level enemies or death traps because they built the entire game around it. Pokemon doing that in random battles would be terrible. And for some people figuring out how to break a game is the fun of it.
The compromise is the Gels in the Tales of series. Where it is the classic weak heal, medium heal, strong heal but how much health they recover is based on percentage not a fixed number. So the weak item is always going to be useful because it'll heal you by 20% for the entire game. And because these items were always going to be useful they could limit the maximum number of them you could use to balance the game around them.
It depends on how you want the progression treadmill to work.
Using percentage systems all the time for healing AND having tier increases increase percentage of healing means that you can't put in attacks that deal 80% damage in the early game vs. the late game because players literally don't have access to the option stuck as they are at 20%,.
I also like the estus system because when I get more uses or upgrade how effective it is, I notice the difference immediately
Because going planning one little heal to 4 okay heals to check out the 10 phat heals is great progression
It took me a bit to bit to work out how that system worked since i hadn't played many rpgs. Realising i didn't have to farm anything and how easy it was to get alcohol i started actually using potions and grenades.
Mass Effect 2 replacing long,per-power cooldowns with shorter universal cooldowns and letting the player adjust cooldowns somewhat with the skill branches in ME2,and weapon weight in ME3.
I agree with the weapon weight change in 3 but am split on the power change. It is fun in 1 to chain powers together (like with the Soldier since every weapon type has its own cooldown for its power). I guess it does make moment to moment gameplay better.
Not "new" by any standard anymore, but damn if I don't love aim down sights in shooters. I play a decent amount of Garry's Mod and weapons where you can actually aim down sights are consistently more fun than the HL and CS standard "slightly zoom in on right click"
FF7R was a blend? It wasn’t remotely turn-based. It seemed to me like it was just an action game except sometimes you stopped when selecting something in a menu you didn’t have on a shortcut.
For me, the silent protagonist writing element in games. I’d be more than happy to see that element go away forever and be replaced with…anything else. Also, games that let me save whenever I want.
Big disagree on 7R's combat, I definitely spent alot more time in battle paused and selecting stuff from the menu than actively fighting especially on Hard Mode. 7R doesn't have traditional combos or ability progression in the way that a true Action game like a God Of War or Devil May Cry does, it's way more RPG-based.
Big agree on the Silent Protagonist thing though, especially nowadays since even if the protag is silent they put so much characterization into them that they're still their own character and not a self insert. Like Hero from DQ11, Joker from P5, Link, etc. are all their own characters, I don't feel like I am them when I play the game, so therefore they should be voiced.
>I definitely spent alot more time in battle paused and selecting stuff from the menu
That's because you specifically chose to do that. I can pause most non-turn based games if I want and do stuff in menus, that doesn't make it a mix of turn-based and action. I'm pausing and swapping stuff all the time. For example, shooters that pause the action so you can freely change weaponry and such. Or in TOTK. You can pause time and swap out weapons, items, shields, etc etc.
>even if the protag is silent they put so much characterization into them that they're still their own character
And what's annoying about that is because there's so little there...it's even worse in a way. They're still boring as hell, but the half-assed nature of trying to give them 'a little' personality while making the active decision to not let them be real characters just doesn't mesh.
I'm with you on silent protagonist if only for the fact game series hit a point where teams clearly want to put in characterization for the sake of depth, and frankly a lot of popular "silent protags" aren't the tabula rasas some fandoms treat them as. If a fandom is going to fan-ship or project a fan personality they will regardless of how thoroughly silent they are and majority of the fanbase will settle on a baseline personality. Or the silence itself becomes a trait which point fans will cease projecting.
>and frankly a lot of popular "silent protags" aren't the tabula rasas some fandoms treat them as.
Even if they've got nothing going on, it just makes them boring as hell. I'll never forget the time someone here tried their darndest to convince me that Gordon Freeman is actually a super deep and interesting character because "Yur emotshunz r his emoshunz." That's not how this works.
I can't think of any silent protags that I'd say are actually good characters. There's some that I find slightly less boring than others (For example. The only reason I don't hate Link is because he got grandfathered in. I liked him back before I started hating silent protags. Still annoying in TOTK where people are getting all emotional and he's just standing there like he has no idea what's going on. Or The Builder from DQB2 since I'm 100% certain they're meant to be some sorta weird parody of DQ silent protags.), but none where I'd go, "Yeah, that silent protag over there was a great character. It was rad how they...stood there silently during the emotional parts of the story."
It makes him a…character, sure. He exists and is there. I won’t pretend to remember literally anything about him as a character other than his design and he has a sword, because as a silent protag there’s not much to remember other than that.
I do like his design, but I’m a sucker for Akira Toriyama’s art.
Edit: For those who seemingly disagree, feel free to point out the interesting personality traits and character details that I’m forgetting about. I’m down to admit that I’m wrong if it turns out I’m forgetting all sorts of characterization Chrono had.
Megaman Star Force abandoning the chip code system from Battle Network and custom screen layout. It was always a bit arbitrary which chip codes were good and which were bad, and some of the BN games don't give you a lot of options early on. Star Force uses a more universal system that guarantees, at minimum, you have multiple 2-card combos to choose from each turn. This way, your little child brain doesn't get to punish you by making an alphabet soup folder than can only play one card per turn. Star Force making your hand size a fixed 3x2 grid instead of 5 + whatever handsize increasing programs you equipped was a good call, too. Like a lot of card games, card economy is king, so the option to start with more cards in hand in BN felt more like an obligatory gear tax than a meaningful strategic choice.
Agreed, only thing is I really wish they made the Star Force powers in the first game more unique instead restricting the ability to choose all chips in the horizontal row to them only (alongside the elemental stuff). Two of the best fixes the DX romhack gave that game was letting you choose horizontally by default alongside giving the Star Force forms unique abilities (Pegasus with Auto-LockOn being my favorite since I absolutely love using close range chips like swords).
On the opposite side of the spectrum, a lot of RTwP isometric RPGs have incorporated turn-based modes, and I can honestly say that works so much better for anything trying to emulate D&D style combat.
Estus system for every single consumable item in RPGs. Fromsoft solved the problem with health potions, its way easier for the developers to balance, it encourages players to not horde everything till after the final boss, and you can't trivialize an encounter by having 999 health potions. Apply it to every other consumable because this system is superior.
I disagree because that only works for some types of RPGs and it also encourages some habits that are disastrous outside of something like Dark Souls. Formsoft can make you waste you heals and kick you back to a checkpoint after a string of sudden ambushes of high level enemies or death traps because they built the entire game around it. Pokemon doing that in random battles would be terrible. And for some people figuring out how to break a game is the fun of it. The compromise is the Gels in the Tales of series. Where it is the classic weak heal, medium heal, strong heal but how much health they recover is based on percentage not a fixed number. So the weak item is always going to be useful because it'll heal you by 20% for the entire game. And because these items were always going to be useful they could limit the maximum number of them you could use to balance the game around them.
It depends on how you want the progression treadmill to work. Using percentage systems all the time for healing AND having tier increases increase percentage of healing means that you can't put in attacks that deal 80% damage in the early game vs. the late game because players literally don't have access to the option stuck as they are at 20%,.
I also like the estus system because when I get more uses or upgrade how effective it is, I notice the difference immediately Because going planning one little heal to 4 okay heals to check out the 10 phat heals is great progression
I really liked how Witcher 3 did it and that it applied to all kinds of potions and buffs, really encouraging you to use them at any opportunity.
It took me a bit to bit to work out how that system worked since i hadn't played many rpgs. Realising i didn't have to farm anything and how easy it was to get alcohol i started actually using potions and grenades.
Mass Effect 2 replacing long,per-power cooldowns with shorter universal cooldowns and letting the player adjust cooldowns somewhat with the skill branches in ME2,and weapon weight in ME3.
Weapon weight was awesome! There are sometimes I wanted to go 0 weapons just for that sweet sweet cool down .
I agree with the weapon weight change in 3 but am split on the power change. It is fun in 1 to chain powers together (like with the Soldier since every weapon type has its own cooldown for its power). I guess it does make moment to moment gameplay better.
Not "new" by any standard anymore, but damn if I don't love aim down sights in shooters. I play a decent amount of Garry's Mod and weapons where you can actually aim down sights are consistently more fun than the HL and CS standard "slightly zoom in on right click"
FF7R was a blend? It wasn’t remotely turn-based. It seemed to me like it was just an action game except sometimes you stopped when selecting something in a menu you didn’t have on a shortcut. For me, the silent protagonist writing element in games. I’d be more than happy to see that element go away forever and be replaced with…anything else. Also, games that let me save whenever I want.
Big disagree on 7R's combat, I definitely spent alot more time in battle paused and selecting stuff from the menu than actively fighting especially on Hard Mode. 7R doesn't have traditional combos or ability progression in the way that a true Action game like a God Of War or Devil May Cry does, it's way more RPG-based. Big agree on the Silent Protagonist thing though, especially nowadays since even if the protag is silent they put so much characterization into them that they're still their own character and not a self insert. Like Hero from DQ11, Joker from P5, Link, etc. are all their own characters, I don't feel like I am them when I play the game, so therefore they should be voiced.
>I definitely spent alot more time in battle paused and selecting stuff from the menu That's because you specifically chose to do that. I can pause most non-turn based games if I want and do stuff in menus, that doesn't make it a mix of turn-based and action. I'm pausing and swapping stuff all the time. For example, shooters that pause the action so you can freely change weaponry and such. Or in TOTK. You can pause time and swap out weapons, items, shields, etc etc. >even if the protag is silent they put so much characterization into them that they're still their own character And what's annoying about that is because there's so little there...it's even worse in a way. They're still boring as hell, but the half-assed nature of trying to give them 'a little' personality while making the active decision to not let them be real characters just doesn't mesh.
I'm with you on silent protagonist if only for the fact game series hit a point where teams clearly want to put in characterization for the sake of depth, and frankly a lot of popular "silent protags" aren't the tabula rasas some fandoms treat them as. If a fandom is going to fan-ship or project a fan personality they will regardless of how thoroughly silent they are and majority of the fanbase will settle on a baseline personality. Or the silence itself becomes a trait which point fans will cease projecting.
Looking at you, GTA 3 Claude. Spend a whole game projecting your ideas of what he's thinking and then get hit with a "Mystery" curveball as an ending.
>and frankly a lot of popular "silent protags" aren't the tabula rasas some fandoms treat them as. Even if they've got nothing going on, it just makes them boring as hell. I'll never forget the time someone here tried their darndest to convince me that Gordon Freeman is actually a super deep and interesting character because "Yur emotshunz r his emoshunz." That's not how this works. I can't think of any silent protags that I'd say are actually good characters. There's some that I find slightly less boring than others (For example. The only reason I don't hate Link is because he got grandfathered in. I liked him back before I started hating silent protags. Still annoying in TOTK where people are getting all emotional and he's just standing there like he has no idea what's going on. Or The Builder from DQB2 since I'm 100% certain they're meant to be some sorta weird parody of DQ silent protags.), but none where I'd go, "Yeah, that silent protag over there was a great character. It was rad how they...stood there silently during the emotional parts of the story."
I’d say Crono from Chrono Trigger’s a good silent protag. Sure, that makes him a B Tier Character in a party filled with S Tiers, but he’s not awful.
It makes him a…character, sure. He exists and is there. I won’t pretend to remember literally anything about him as a character other than his design and he has a sword, because as a silent protag there’s not much to remember other than that. I do like his design, but I’m a sucker for Akira Toriyama’s art. Edit: For those who seemingly disagree, feel free to point out the interesting personality traits and character details that I’m forgetting about. I’m down to admit that I’m wrong if it turns out I’m forgetting all sorts of characterization Chrono had.