6 Member Party

My take on FFXIII's battle system was that it is no longer about micro control, but about macro party strategy. On that note:

What would you think about having all six party members in battle as opposed to the current three? Obviously they would have to increase the limits of Paradigms you can have in your 'deck'. (I think 5 is significantly to low already). And ignore any hardware limitations :)

Would this make battle more interesting, allowing more combinations and strategy? Or would it make things the same with more people spamming the sexta-disaster Paradigm? Should they institute some system that forces you to not stack classes?

No, they shouldn't force you not to stack classes. The key to getting people to not use the same classes over and over is to balance them all and make them all equally fun to play. Putting artificial limits on it will just get annoying.

Having six characters in a battle would be interesting, sure, but it would also be insane to try to keep track of on any level. It's already a complaint I've seen from a few people that the battles are too hectic.

Given that there are 6 roles total you would not need to change paradigms too often.
Each character would be able to do each.

I don't think having one character of each for most of the time would be be an optimal balance. I have half of my paradigms just devoted to combinations of COM and RAV as it is.

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Having six characters in a battle would be interesting, sure, but it would also be insane to try to keep track of on any level. It's already a complaint I've seen from a few people that the battles are too hectic.

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I was going with the approach that it is already to hectic to keep track of what is going on at the micro level, why not screw it entirely and go all macro?

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Originally Posted by VeloZer0

I was going with the approach that it is already to hectic to keep track of what is going on at the micro level, why not screw it entirely and go all macro?

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I don't think it's as hectic on a micro level as the game tries to make people think it is given how few decisions you actually make in any given battle. Once I caught on to the fact that the battle system was more flash than anything else and I had plenty of time to make most decisions I had to it's seemed kind of slow to me actually.

I wouldn't personally want to see a 6 member party, at least not without the game being rebalanced to the point that it's not even the same battle system anymore (not that that would necessarily be bad as I hate this battle system). I've already been crushing everything for the last 25+ hours using only three basic paradigm setups (occasionally a fourth if I need a little extra healing). With the way the game is balanced right now, if you just shoveled in all six characters I could probably go through with just one paradigm. And if I'm never changing paradigms then I'm not really even playing the game anymore am I.

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Originally Posted by VeloZer0

I was going with the approach that it is already to hectic to keep track of what is going on at the micro level, why not screw it entirely and go all macro?

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I can still keep pretty good track of what's going on in battles. If there were six characters, I think it would be nigh on impossible.

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Originally Posted by Vivi22

Once I caught on to the fact that the battle system was more flash than anything else and I had plenty of time to make most decisions I had to it's seemed kind of slow to me actually.

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Yeah, this is what I think too. It initially seems quite hectic and it still can get to be that way when you're changing paradigms a lot against a tough mark or a boss, but once you're in the right paradigm and all you need to do is go for Stagger and finish the enemies off, you realise just how slow the ATB bar is actually filling up and how much time you really have. This is even more true if you're using auto-commands.

As for the 6 member party concept, I think it would've been interesting. It would make battles too easy because there wouldn't be a need for paradigm shifting. Of course, if SE countered that with tougher opponents that might require, say, 5 Ravagers and a Commando to Stagger, it'd be kinda fun. But, it would also look kind of silly to see all six party members bombarding a single Flan with Firagas. If given six members, I'd like the choice (like FFXII) to be able to change my party leader and control whoever needed to be controlled as the battle played out.

It goes without saying that there would have to be some tweaks to the mechanics. If you have six party members you could easily add opponents that would require more than one SEN to survive phases of their attacks, ect... I would also see severely reducing the amount of spells SAB and SYN's could cast, since you have all the party members each one spell should probably only be able to cast by one party member. In essence it would make encounters more like MMO boss fights, with different phases and attack pasterns that you have to constantly adapt for.

I though the battle system of FFXIII was good, not great, but is the first game with AI party members that I have ever enjoyed playing. Now that I can accept that a game with AI party members could be fun I guess I am just playing around trying to make something even better :)

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Once I caught on to the fact that the battle system was more flash than anything else and I had plenty of time to make most decisions I had to it's seemed kind of slow to me actually.

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We appear to be talking about different things :)
I was more referring on the inability to track stuff like the exact damage your party was giving/taking, and other numerical details like that. For example, if I add +10 Strength it is virtually impossible to track the actual difference in damage I am dealing. That was to which I was referring.

I don't have a problem with any party size, but I have a huge problem with your group of more than three becoming three people. FFX did an okay job with it because you could call anyone in at any time, and in Suikoden it makes sense, but usually it's just pretty retarded.

I don't especially see why six people is especially harder to balance than three or four. We're assuming so because we're used to three and four as the standard, but Suikoden has six people and does just fine.

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Originally Posted by VeloZer0

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Once I caught on to the fact that the battle system was more flash than anything else and I had plenty of time to make most decisions I had to it's seemed kind of slow to me actually.

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We appear to be talking about different things :)
I was more referring on the inability to track stuff like the exact damage your party was giving/taking, and other numerical details like that. For example, if I add +10 Strength it is virtually impossible to track the actual difference in damage I am dealing. That was to which I was referring.

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Well we can blame that on the bad camera angles as much as anything else. :D

Not that I think you really need to know how much more you do with +10 strength anyway. The Crystarium is so linear, and each role tends to cover strength and magic equally enough that you can kind of just keep plugging away with a more is better attitude. Even if you did care enough to figure out how much more damage each added stat does I don't think there's enough customization in the game to matter too much.