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[Sowelu]

WISH-LIST TIME.

So...Final Fantasy Tactics was the classic of the genre.  Magic was kind of brutal for newbies to use, difficulty was high, leveling up only kind of helped but not really, and having your whole team be the same level was often important.  Grinding for job points was important.  The plot was apparently pretty good, and you generally just played straight through the game in a linear fashion with some training.  There's customization, in that you can select what classes you want, and tweak them a little and equip them a little.

Final Fantasy Tactics Advance made leveling a little more useful, took some grind out of it, and simplified the mechanics so it was easier to get into.  It added weird rules, and was a bit less linear.  Customization still limited.

Disgaea had a story, kinda, but grinding was a huge part of the game.  You could avoid it, but then you wouldn't really be playing Disgaea, because the whole point of the game is to get to absurd levels and smack monsters around with "123,341K" damage and have millions of points in your stats, and to go into the item world and level up your items themselves.  A bit more customization than the FFT games.

And then there were the various Sega ones (Shining Force I think it was called?), that had not much grinding, and almost zero customization, while being hugely linear.

I keep really really wanting to make a Tactics game but I don't know what makes the grindfests good and what makes the grindfests annoying :x

I mean, is customization a good thing?  Or does it just let you make cheapshot characters that are overpowered?  Is grinding kind of thrilling just for the sake of big numbers, or is it totally pointless?  If you go too much in the Shining Force direction, you wind up with just chess.  And hey, chess is fun, but you might as well just play chess.  Part of the tactics experience is that every battle is a little different.

How many characters are good?  Is it good to encourage the player to have fifty characters, or do you want them to rely on eight or so main ones so their attention isn't so divided?  How many characters do you want on the field...is six too few, is fourteen too many?

And how often do you want to introduce new abilities?  Should new ones be more powerful?  If you start out the game with those bizarre mathematical FFT classes, or summoners or whatever, do you lose something important in terms of game progression?  On the other hand, if those classes normally become available during the plot, how does that apply to a game that's plot-light, grind-heavy?


For my own part, I'm thinking around sixteen characters is good, eight on the field at a time, and no permadeath like X-Com has.  I'm imagining a system where you can grind for stats in two ways; either leveling up your characters in easy-ish fights (95% chance of winning most of the time?), or facing more challenging opponents (75% chance of winning?) to unlock new things.  Leveling up giving actually pretty small bonuses.  And then having some hard modes like Disgaea's item world, too, that again gives a noticeable boost but not one that totally breaks your characters.  I don't want a plot because plots get in the way, and you're always like "am I too low level for this?  Am I too high level for this?".  I'd REALLY like to do an Item World style thing where you go into worlds inside your characters, beating bosses to unlock hidden potential.

One thing I'm really torn on is, it'd be neat to have something vaguely like a tech tree, where unlocking each new class/ability/etc is more expensive than the last but you get to choose what order to do it in, and your first choice is always cheap.  Or something where you need to beat slightly harder bosses to unlock the next class each time.  But that could also be pretty lame if you made stupid choices and aren't strong enough to unlock stuff you need.


So, for people who are already know they are willing to spend 40 hours on a Tactics game, what keeps your interest?  What's boring that should be cut out?  How would you like to customize your characters and unlock new abilities?  How should the challenge be maintained?  Anything you ever really wished you could see?

[Tilla]

For my money I always enjoyed Disgaea series more than FFT (although the Advance games are much much better as well)

[Sowelu]

Yeah, hour-for-hour I'd say I enjoyed FFTA most, Disgaea second, Shining Force third, and FFT least.  But I might not have enjoyed FFTA as much if I had discovered the game breaking combinations earlier on.  Disgaea on the other hand, the whole point of that game is to break the game, you're encouraged to be as cheap as humanly possible, so the balance is surprisingly good.  If that makes sense.

[Nirur Torir]

I've only just started getting into rpg tactics style games recently (not counting X-Com), but I'd say to pick one school of thought: Either no grind allowed (Fire Emblem), or grind allowed. I prefer grind allowed, but only if I'm not technically required to grind in order to beat the game. I feel that it's better to allow diverse class customization options, even if it potentially allows people to come up with the most overpowered combo and only using that.

I like the idea of picking the random battle difficulty.

In a single player game, why does it matter of people find and abuse a particularly powerful class/combination? Sure it may ruin the game for GameFAQs addicts, but it can be satisfying at times to slaughter the AI with a broken team -- or beat the game with an underpowered team.

[Keiseth]

I enjoyed Disgaea, but the grinding just wasn't worth it. At first it's fun to learn new abilities and have more options at your disposal, but by level 100 you're just making numbers bigger than other numbers, doing the exact same things over and over.

I liked Final Fantasy Tactics for the ridiculous number of abilities you could give a character. And Mathematics. A frustrating yet all-powerful breed of magic. The story was fun, and the music was phenomenal. Not many games let you ride a giant chicken, knowing Ninjutsu and Math, hopping up mountains and blasting Holy on every character, including yourself. And the chicken can shoot fireballs.

I think the most well thought out and varied Tactics game I've played is Jagged Alliance 2. It's mostly preparation. With the right plan, a team of six can kill a team of one hundred-- without casualties. With the wrong plan one enemy can kill all of you. Levels and stats are important, but equipment is equally important, and location and stratagem are more important than both.

Fun times: fighting an army of 100 that invaded the first town in the 1.13 Mod/patch. With terrible weaponry. And winning due to insane, sneaky tactics, firing out of windows and from roofs. Then walking onto your next objective decked out in elite commando armor and Steyr AUGs. And nightvision. Quick save and quick load were used, but not nearly as often as you'd think, and primarily for when I walked too far and couldn't fire on that same turn.

And still on normal difficulty one bullet has the chance of killing or terribly crippling any of your mercs.

So I think the best Tactics game is one that relies on the player to pull out a win, when no matter how much you prepare the best laid plans can occasionally go wrong, and no matter how strong your enemy is, the right combination of guile and determination can see that they fall.

[Mephansteras]

I enjoyed Disgaea at first, but after about 40 hours of play and only getting through about a third of the game I gave up. You quickly hit a point where there was little left to discover about the game other then the plot, and you HAD to grind to get enough power to get through the plot.

So I'd say that's a bad way to do it.

FFT is probably my favorite console game of all time. The sheer amount of customization allows for a lot of interesting party configurations, the story was extremely deep with interesting side-quests, and the game required very little grinding if you don't like that sort of thing while allowing LOTS of grind if you do. I think that mix is ideal.

As this thread demonstrates, however, it depends a lot on the player and what they like.

In general, though, the most important thing is that there be variety in combat and that the game is well balanced. Vandal Hearts was one of the first 'Tactics' style games I ever played, and it was quite good. Much simpler then FFT, but well balanced and interesting.

You should have a decent amount of variety in classes and customization with multiple workable combinations. Combat (either story or grind) should be varied enough that you don't reach the point where you feel like you've done everything a hundred times with nothing new.

[Gunner-Chan]

I think the most well thought out and varied Tactics game I've played is Jagged Alliance 2. It's mostly preparation. With the right plan, a team of six can kill a team of one hundred-- without casualties. With the wrong plan one enemy can kill all of you. Levels and stats are important, but equipment is equally important, and location and stratagem are more important than both.

Fun times: fighting an army of 100 that invaded the first town in the 1.13 Mod/patch. With terrible weaponry. And winning due to insane, sneaky tactics, firing out of windows and from roofs. Then walking onto your next objective decked out in elite commando armor and Steyr AUGs. And nightvision. Quick save and quick load were used, but not nearly as often as you'd think, and primarily for when I walked too far and couldn't fire on that same turn.

And still on normal difficulty one bullet has the chance of killing or terribly crippling any of your mercs.

So I think the best Tactics game is one that relies on the player to pull out a win, when no matter how much you prepare the best laid plans can occasionally go wrong, and no matter how strong your enemy is, the right combination of guile and determination can see that they fall.

I knew I liked you, a lot.

A LOT.

Heh. Anyway yeah, if you are looking for "Tactics" games I would go with Jagged Alliance 2 or Silent Storm. Stragegy RPGS ar a bit diffrent, but the Disgaea series is always good. So is what I have played of Front Mission (That reminds be, I need to go find the one that came out on the PS1).

[Keiseth]

Oh hey! I remember Front Mission, now. I played the SNES one a lot. There's a lot of luck involved but its wonderfully diverse, especially for its age and being an SNES game. I can't remember the long term mechanics enough to see how well it does toward the end, but it's definitely a fun time to be had.

Ogre Tactics is another great one, I think designed by the chap behind Final Fantasy Tactics. I think the GBA one is the latest in the series-- it builds on the FFT formula very well. The very first battle you get in is tremendously epic*, and a lot like FFT's first battle in retrospect.

*rain pouring down, water smashing against the cliffs, it was just an awesome scene.

[yamo]

Master of Monsters for the Sega:

hexes-i love hexagonal maps

simple resource management-mana points that were generated by controlling towers.

A wide variety of available pieces that had well differentiated strengths and weaknesses

Pieces gained experience and graduated to become new stronger pieces-if they survived.

Well designed LARGE maps that made terain and formation vital considerations.

interesting spells

ZOC

clean graphics

Bad Stuff:  The ai cheated.  The stupid combat cut scenes that could have been replaced by on-map animations.  Needed a map editor tool kit.

A worthy game for a tribute /clone development.

[Duke 2.0]

 One thing that has killed many a strategy game: Access to the information you need. Many games have some little tidbit of information you need to dow what you are doing now successfully, but the game is too busy warning you of some other information you don't need now. This leads to confusion, and a system looking more complex than it should.

[A_Fey_Dwarf]

No one mentions Wesnoth? I much prefer, Battle for Wesnoth to FFT and Disgaea. Apparently FFTA2 on DS is quite good, I haven't yet managed to play it but am planning on buying a DS for it. Tactics games are probably my favorite games available but for some reason I could never get into Disgaea.

[Awayfarer]

I"m surprised there's so little talk of Vandal Hearts. The first one was great. Sure, the graphics were dated, but the level designs were always interesting and the character classes made for an interesting game depending on which class you picked for which character.

Vandal Hearts 2 is...hmm, I want to say it's even better but there's very little to compare between the two. The first one can easily be beaten in under 20 hours. VH2 would probably take about 80. The equipment system and the way movement is handled in battles (where both you and the enemy move a piece at the same time.) are a bit quirky but not too tough to get used to. They're both really unique too.

The thing I liked best about it was the plot. For starters it's massive. Secondly the villains are not of the "top hat and handelbar moustache" variety. Just about every single one is using war and manipulation for some understandable (maybe even noble, or at least worthwhile) goals.

Front Mission 3(?) for the PS1 was good. There's a decision early in the game that results in one of two story paths. Definitely worthwhile to play through both even though that'll take forever.

[Sowelu]

Hmm.  Do you have the most fun when you're adapting to enemy tactics, or when they are adapting to yours, or when you're just using excellent skills and an excellent team setup to own everything regardless of what gets thrown at you?

Disgaea is a huge case of "your team is mostly god", where you occasionally have to drop your wind mage out because the enemy is immune, or add an extra healer because monsters are standing on reverse damage tiles, but it's generally very repetitive.

I haven't played JA, only X-Com, but I know in X-Com there's very little meaningful customization:  You've already picked what weapons to bring when you get there.  Maybe you can bring your heavy squad over to deal with the problem on this side of the map, but really, the answer is almost always 'explosives' or (for terror missions) 'more plasma'.  Sometimes "Oh it's snake men, bring the incendiaries".

I'm envisioning that a really neat system would be a game that has multiple enemy factions that like to use different types of units, so when you get a random attack you don't know exactly what units are attacking, you but you have a bit of a guess.  Or better yet, sometimes you send out units to attack the enemy--but they can see what you've sent, and get to pick their own units to deploy against you specifically.  In a game that doesn't have permadeath, I also think it would be neat (if kind of weird thematically) if your enemies' units didn't really die either, and they built on them and customized them over time too.  So you'd live in fear of Bob, their one overpowered fighter they keep deploying, and start working on specific anti-Bob measures.

I never got far enough in FFT to see what all customization was available, just that you could buy new abilities with JP and stuff, and it let you cast spells or run farther etc.  So, seeing as customization is one of the favorite parts here, for all games...  HOW does the customization in your favorite games work, and why/how does it specifically improve that game?  What's the best customization methods, and what methods are lacking or do you wish were out there?

I'm also pondering the example of "kill a hundred guys with a tiny force then take their stuff", which seems like it's most fun for only one battle.  Could a Battletech-clans-inspired system be a good thing here, where the player always has the choice of deploying fewer or weaker units to a battle, being rewarded for how underpowered he is while still winning?  I don't want to just give more XP or "hey you get awesome loot early" for doing that, because that takes away the whole point of having an underpowered team!  Maybe these honor points are what unlock new customization options?  What else could they be good for...how can you reward a very awesome team, team without getting rid of the 'underpowered' thing, and without making the game too short by letting them win too soon?

[Mephansteras]

I'm also pondering the example of "kill a hundred guys with a tiny force then take their stuff", which seems like it's most fun for only one battle.  Could a Battletech-clans-inspired system be a good thing here, where the player always has the choice of deploying fewer or weaker units to a battle, being rewarded for how underpowered he is while still winning?  I don't want to just give more XP or "hey you get awesome loot early" for doing that, because that takes away the whole point of having an underpowered team!  Maybe these honor points are what unlock new customization options?  What else could they be good for...how can you reward a very awesome team, team without getting rid of the 'underpowered' thing, and without making the game too short by letting them win too soon?

I can think of a few things 'honor' could do for you. Simplest one is to unlock side-story missions. Other options include abilities/customization not normally available at all (don't have to be super powerful, just interesting), and possibly unlocking characters. Generally, though, you can go for the angle of getting interesting stuff that way without shortening the game or ramping up the power level a whole lot.

[JoshuaFH]

I enjoyed Disgaea at first, but after about 40 hours of play and only getting through about a third of the game I gave up. You quickly hit a point where there was little left to discover about the game other then the plot, and you HAD to grind to get enough power to get through the plot.

So I'd say that's a bad way to do it.

You're doing it wrong! There's almost NO grinding in Disgaea for fhe main storyline. It's only really in the end-end game, where you're aiming to kill the super strong optional bosses where grinding becomes necessary, and even then, clever tactics and luck can pull you through just fine. The only times I had to grind for the main story were when I was doing ridiculous self-imposed challenges. Though, if you're talking about the sequals, and not the original, then I can't help you, because I've never played them.

There is no love for Fire Emblem! Fire Emblem: Seisen No Keifu is one of the best strategy games I've ever played. I beat it around 6 times, and it's a really great example of how to pull off customization with unchangeable job-type classes.

Rhapsody: a musical adventure is a bit childish, but worth a look. Persona 2 (or was it 3?) was a pretty good tactics type game, really left an impression in my mind?

Why does everyone like FFTA so much? I own it, have beaten it (twice), and have determined that it's rubbish. I can't even list all the mistakes that were made in that game because there's so many. I can't say anything about the sequal though.

Front Mission for the SNES was great, I beat it twice and aside from the schizophrenically sketchy difficulty curve, it's really good. The endgame is laughably easy though, as you can deck out your max level guys in the worst armor and the worst weapons, and STILL beat the shit out of the hardest arena enemies.

Shining Force 2 was terribly linear, but offered a lot of customization in your party, as there were TONS of characters to use, and you could only use so many. Further customization was afforded with how and when you upgraded your units.

Secondly the villains are not of the "top hat and handelbar moustache" variety.

I would murder for a literal top hat and handlebar moustache villain. Fighting Snidely Whiplash in a tactics game would be the funniest thing ever.