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The game brings many xp through quests and the whole roster get the xp, but battles xp are only for those in the battle. There's certainly a logic but I felt not fun to involve some troubles in roster xp management.
Have to manage it from an equipment point of view is more ok even if for equipping fairly the whole roster pushed me to some farming but manage it for the xp was/is mildly tedious.
I feel it could be an hardcore option, but another option would be to use a different xp management for the roster. For example a player non hardcore option would be to allow match xp of roster to xp of Loren or the main character, a follower with more xp wouldn't be changed.
I didn't consider it to be a problem. I liked powering up everyone. This was a game where grinding was actually kind of fun due to the wide variety of skills everyone gets to learn. That and the fun of seeing how different combinations of characters work out.
That being said, I do think this game did have a disproportionate amount of characters in comparison to how many could be on the field of battle at once. It's always frustrating to leave so many of them "on the sidelines" during battle.
But this was mitigated by the many "iron man" events where you had to handle multiple fights in a row without recovering health or stamina. I thought that series were the best events because they forced you to rely on everyone on the team, rather then just mixing your party up for the sake of letting everyone participate.
I hope the sequal has many such events where you have to rely on every party member as opposted to playing like a little league coach and simply mixing up your roster for the sake of letting everyone play.
But this topic is really a matter of preferences - some people prefer less choice, others like to have a big roster of characters (Suikoden fans anyone?), others want autolevelup of chars not taking much part of the action while others like to level up each one... is hard to please anyone.
Not sure yet how the sequel will work, but in my upcoming RPG Seasons Of The Wolf, you'll have 8 characters in total, so under this aspect will be different. I'll see what kind of feedback people give about that choice.
Choice is good, but there are plenty of us out there who value total participation just as much, if not more. I just hate it when half my team or more has no valuable role whatsover, and I don't think auto-leveling is the solution. I don't like auto-leveling because it builds up team members who didn't earn it. I prefer setting up a system that allows everyone to have a valuable role so they can level up because they work for it like everyone else.
Like I said, the "iron man" events in this game that required you to use your "backup" characters were a good idea. They were an excellent method of increasing team participation, and doing so in a meaningful way as opposed to putting someone in the field just for the sake of playing them
So in the sequal I hope you set it up so that there is more participation from the whole team. If that means less characters, that's fine. I prefer less characters who get to participate more over tons of characters who have nothing productive to do.
This is creating a negative gap for equipping the whole roster but that point is roughly ok, this creating a negative gap for level up the whole roster and I felt that point not that cool.
I totally understand players will enjoy farm and grind to manage it, that why I don't request to remove this feature but instead add a Hardcore player option that enables few options like that.
- Hardcore option : Roster xp is manually managed.
- Non Hardcore Option : Player can trigger xp level up of roster to match xp of Player Character (or Loren, not sure).
- Eventually the Hardcore option could includes a slight xp bonus from xp combats like +15% of xp combats.
Anyway even with that approach I feel cooler to have a player option to manage xp of a large roster in a different way, but just a player option, and the equipments of the whole roster is still to be managed manually.
I was going to say I disagree with this, but I suppose it does make sense if the hardcore option offers a significant (not slight) bonus incentive for doing so.
But really, what would be much better then that and would be more likely to satisfy everyone would be to keep the munual experience, but set up the system so that everyone has a valuable role and they all gain experience naturally, without excessive grinding. The best way to do this is simply to ensure the number characters in the party is proportionate to the number that can participate in battle. Either less characters or more battle participants. I'd prefer option #2 myself. Who wouldn't love to have 8 on 8 fights or 10 on 10?
The iron man events were another way to help with this. It also would help if you didn't have to use Loren and your player character for almost all the story battles, even the ones that are not explicitly about them.
Another thing that would help would be setting up the system so that participation in battle will unlock dialog choices, player quests, and romance options.
The idea here is that the game keeps track of battle participation for every character (all battles, including random encounters and training missions in town). After participating in a certain number, a line of dialog is opened in the camp. Do it enough and it unlocks potential quests or affection points.
I think this is good from both a logic and gameplay standpoint. Logically, it makes sense that increasing participation in battle with the main character makes it more likely for someone to bond with and open up to them. Likewise, feeling left out makes it less so. This also provides a great incentive to let everyone participate, especially the ones you want affection with.
I wonder why complain that other players could use an option you don't want use, just don't use it if you don't want it. For me it's like if you feel the option you want isn't fun but a penalty, then it's unfair other players could skip it, nope all have to suffer. :-P
I have played many Roster games and those not managing xp with one character reference generally end in more or less grinding or a fake roster with soon pointless characters because too low level. Exemple Baldur's Gate 1, you can make a few switch but despite a huge roster at your disposal you'll end specialize and choose a few among them. At reverse Dragon Age Origin base xp on a character reference and your roster is a real roster. A third example is Etrian Odyssey, the roster is purely fake and force to a huge grinding, it's not even useful to use a roster.
Managing equipment of a roster is already materializing well the roster management. Events forcing split the rosters in parallel groups hence making use a larger part of the roster, or events forcing some characters in some combats, are good points even with xp managed with a character reference.
Now I admit that LTAP roster is working better than usual with roster games not using a reference character for xp. One reason is most xp come from quests instead of combats, and it ensures a roughly equal leveling of xp of the whole roster. There's many opportunities to spread the members use in combats without a too heavy xp penalty probably because the game difficulty management is soft. With a more strict difficulty management ensure this spreading will involved a penalty.
I don't think that giving a significant bonus of xp to grinding combats would be right, it would just allow break difficulty through quick grinding and specializing a bit the roster.
And about forcing the player level up evenly the whole roster it's not an easy management. For example the game tries ensure not force too many secondary characters in a combat so if one or two are weak you can compensate by using the best to complement them in the combat. So the point is you can specialize your roster and focus only on a part of it and then have characters with higher level.
Now ok the current system can be improved and in fact a main improvement is to have a view of all your roster on one panel with a hint of their level, with the current UI it's rather tedious to check this. More or less it's the main flaw of the current system, all in all I don't grind much and more with theb idea of some farming for equipments (gold to buy equipments for the whole roster) and then take care use more lower level characters.
Another way to solve minimize the problem of manually managing xp of a roster is to use a sort of exponetial xp amount per level, like 100, 200, 400, 800, 1600, and so on. In such system a character level 0 level up to level N for the same amount of xp a character level N level up to level N+1. It just ensure you can level up with a quick grinding a character to the current normal level without to provide a significant boost of level through this grinding for characters already at expected level.
Again, the iron man events in Loren were a good start on this process. Likewise, the split team concepts you brought up would be a good solution too. All I proposed was expanding on this concept by making the number of battle participants more propotional to the total number of characters on your team, as well as throwing in some extra incentives (but not requirements) to utalize your whole team by basing dialog and romance options on battle participation, which not only works a proper incentive in the game, but also makes logical sense in the real world.
I agree that "forcing the player level up evenly the whole roster it's not an easy management." As someone who just finished the game doing pricisely that, no one knows that better than me. That's why my solution is to make total participation from all team members more natural and less forced, so it's not excessive grinding that maintains team parity, but nartually flowing story-based gameplay. Everyone gets heavy participation regardless of how much or how little grinding you do. See what I mean?
Second answer is yes, I understand the fun of your suggestions like have some more events where you split the roster in multiple combats teams forcing use a larger selection in the roster, or take care force less combats have Loren/MC, and some more. But it won't solve the problem of having a frequent manual survey of xp of the whole roster.
You also wouldn't have to frequently check everyone's XP. The idea is to create a system that nartually allows for everyone to heavily participate, so their levels would generally be equal. Loren already does this somewhat with the iron man events and the shared experience from quest completions. I just suggested a few expansion on that concept.