Modernizing Suikoden

A place to post news and also give your ideas about the future of the Suikoden series.
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Xelinis
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Modernizing Suikoden

Post by Xelinis »

As of late, I've been glued to my Wii playing Xenoblade, which has been a phenomenal experience so far. But as good as the story, worldview, and battle system is, what stands out in my mind is just how much it modernizes the genre. This got me thinking, how can Suikoden be modernized? Here are my thoughts:

HP - If it's one thing Xenoblade has made me realize, it's this: I've always hated restoring my HP post-battle. It's a monotonous experience and I don't like going through my inventory and using Medicines after each and every single battle to make sure that no one slows me down in the next one. I suggest that HP should be restored completely post-battle. To balance this out, the difficulty of individual battles can be increased.

Rune MP - I cannot lie, I simply do not like the way it's implemented in any of the core games. I have all these interesting spells that I want to use right away, but I always hesitate saying to myself, "No Dan, save it for the boss." I shouldn't have to restrain myself like that, I enjoy going all out on my enemies. That is why I propose two additions to this system. First, MP on all levels fully recovers after every battle. Second, in-battle, MP will periodically regenerate by one point after a certain number of turns depending on the MP level and your skill level in it. To balance this out, enemies should be given higher HP, have clearer affinities, and each rune spell should have short (but by no means unimpressive) graphical animations. To sum this point up, I want Suikoden to encourage the use of rune spells outside of boss battles.

Duels - Strike, talk, strike, talk, strike, how do we still tolerate this outdated system? Suikoden V certainly moved this forward by adding a timer, something that really upped the tension. But for current and future generation consoles, it's no longer enough. I suggest adopting a QTE-style system where the battle never pauses, but you are shown in the midst of it when to press the button. Attack, Defend, and Special Attack should be maintained, but there are so many other cues that can be utilized rather than just what your opponent is saying. You can pay attention to movements, facials expressions, the unique sound of a hidden weapon being unsheathed, even the vibration of your controller. With these, every duel can be vastly different. Suikoden's duels have always been about pattern recognition, and this would take it to a new level.

Funds - I always wondered why the budget of an entire army comes from the pocket change of a teenager. Certainly, the kid should have a wallet of his own, but the army should have a separate budget entirely. This is what should be tapped into when you're buying new armor or sharpening weapons at the HQ. There should also be more opportunities for the army to generate it's own money. A stronger economic system would be much appreciated.

I may post more later, but these are my current thoughts on the matter.
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Zer0
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Re: Modernizing Suikoden

Post by Zer0 »

Are you Peter Molyneux lol?

That aside, i like Duels the way they are, they always give me warm fuzzies when one starts up.
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patapi
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Re: Modernizing Suikoden

Post by patapi »

At least someone did enjoy Tierkreis' un-Suikoden-like MP system.
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Xelinis
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Re: Modernizing Suikoden

Post by Xelinis »

Nonono, don't get me wrong, I like how Suikoden's 4-Level MP system is set up. I'm just suggesting that it be slightly modified to encourage more use outside of boss battles. I am in no way suggesting that the Tierkreis MP system should be adopted.
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Hirathien
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Re: Modernizing Suikoden

Post by Hirathien »

The HP thing is in effect in Final Fantasy XIII, quite neat function. The same about MP, although they use another system.

If you make the Duels have quick-time events, then some fans might feel discouraged to try it out, due to the increased difficulty.

Interesting set of ideas though.
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ninjaluc79
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Re: Modernizing Suikoden

Post by ninjaluc79 »

Xelinis wrote:To sum this point up, I want Suikoden to encourage the use of rune spells outside of boss battles.
But won't that make mages broken? Ever wonder why FF mages were that broken? If you can spam Flare like there's no tomorrow with 99 Ethers, yeah. And besides, the Suikoden series tend to favor physical types in the endgame since most enemies there have absurdly high resistances. Well, so much that you wonder why have your bothered bringing your Fire Mage when your physical attackers can decimate mobs faster than he can.

So, basically, that's the balance dilemma that Suikoden is facing should they revamp the entire battle system.

A single-pool MP system is the easiest fix for that, it's just that un-Suikoden. Sure, you would like your Fire Mages to burn everything in sight early game, but that's pretty much broken if restoring MP is just that easy. That's not the Suikoden early game that we knew.
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EstrangedIX
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Re: Modernizing Suikoden

Post by EstrangedIX »

Personally, I like the idea of healing after battle and resting after exhausting your magic. That makes it more realistic compared to just making it low maintenance and broken. What does need a serious update though, is the power and function of lower level spells. Too many just become completely useless. Perhaps those should change with a person's magic growth, not just rune upgrades.

Love the separate finance idea. It shouldn't take much to implement a budget system for your hq. Maybe with a treasury officer to recruit?

Duel tweaks sound good as well.
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eldrasidar
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Re: Modernizing Suikoden

Post by eldrasidar »

Honestly, part of what I enjoy the most about Suikoden has been its consistently simple gameplay. Frankly, by this point, they got most of the gameplay elements pretty well established. I feel like they should be focusing on the narrative and plot at this point, more than the gameplay. That's been one of the things that's bothered me about a lot of newer console RPG's, it feels like they spend so much time trying to make something new and different that they forget to develop a good plot or characters, and then because it's some crazy new system that I don't understand, the game loses it's enjoyment factor on three levels.

As with regards to your suggestions:
HP: That basically already exists, just take a support character with the Healing or Bath skill, although honestly, if you're taking heavy damage in every little fight, you're probably doing something wrong.

Rune MP: Your suggestion is essentially to remove all balance from the Magic System. If Suikoden was like Final Fantasy, where there's usually some crazy optional bosses at the end, then there might be a somewhat legitimate reason to do this at the end of game, but frankly, there's never a need to have that much high level magic.

Duels: They could be made more dynamic for sure than what essentially now is a variation of rock/paper/scissors for sure. The most obvious way, would be to implement a fighting game system, but I think I'd rather see something more like the general gameplay system for Rain, something that combines dialogue, quick responses, and a range of different actions.

Funds: Technically, right now your personal funds actually represent those of your army, and since you're in charge of it, it makes sense you'd always have access to it, and the vast majority of the things you purchase with it are for the army as a whole, not things for you. I could see them setting up a war funds thing, used to buy upgrades for units in war, kind of like how you could use ocean runes to upgrade your ships in suikoden 4, although presumably more interesting than that, but I would avoid making it too large a portion of the game, because then the game starts taking on Civilization sort of feel, which I think detracts from the original point of the game.
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AthenaCat
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Re: Modernizing Suikoden

Post by AthenaCat »

Xelinis wrote:HP - If it's one thing Xenoblade has made me realize, it's this: I've always hated restoring my HP post-battle. It's a monotonous experience and I don't like going through my inventory and using Medicines after each and every single battle to make sure that no one slows me down in the next one. I suggest that HP should be restored completely post-battle. To balance this out, the difficulty of individual battles can be increased.
Really? I hated the way V made it so that HP didn't increase increase after battle at all, even in the case of characters who've leveled up, but your suggestion would make things way too easy, even for a Suikodengame.
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Re: Modernizing Suikoden

Post by LanceHeart »

As someone who played through and absolutely hated FFXIII, I do not approve of the HP recovery concept. Square Enix barely understood how to balance that out (with a LOT of horrible exceptional fights) and I don't expect Konami to spend the time retooling the game's battle formula to take that into account.

Having a "Heal all" menu item that automatically uses a medicine stack from the inventory is a far more desirable shortcut to me rather than having to live through a game with limited healing options in-battle.
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ninjaluc79
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Re: Modernizing Suikoden

Post by ninjaluc79 »

eldrasidar wrote:Rune MP: Your suggestion is essentially to remove all balance from the Magic System. If Suikoden was like Final Fantasy, where there's usually some crazy optional bosses at the end, then there might be a somewhat legitimate reason to do this at the end of game, but frankly, there's never a need to have that much high level magic.
Well, okay, the one complaint about Suikoden mages is that you're forced to reserve their limited MP charges for the boss, which should not happen, unless normal encounters are so easy that even S-ranged mages can just sit at the back while the physical attackers devour the enemies alive.

To make Suikoden mages still useful in random encounters without worrying about having not enough MP for the boss is to make all of them L-ranged and their ATK power dependent on MAG instead of STR. That way, they can still attack normally without having to do nothing, and yet they still have enough juice for the boss fight.

And sure, the magic runes need to be rebalanced in such a way that each succeeding spell level is more useful than the previous one, but still making the lower level spells useful. Sure, it's easy to do that for support runes, but attack magic runes? Make their damage multiplicative instead of additive.

For example, the Lv1 Lightning spell should do 1.2x DMG [1.2*(MAG + WPN ATK - MDEF)] instead of 150 DMG [150 + MAG - MDEF]. That prevents them from being underpowered late-game, and is especially useful for Fire Mages since you would only want to use the higher level spells against bosses so you can still use Flaming Arrows in normal encounters without any problems.

Clearly, the Physical and Magical sides of any game are very difficult to balance out without making one side broken. FF did that, but it made both sides broken.
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eldrasidar
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Re: Modernizing Suikoden

Post by eldrasidar »

What you're suggesting ninjaluc is actually something the Suikoden series has already been working on through rune affinity and the skill system. In suikoden 3 for example, having an S in fire magic, add 70% more damage to every fire spell, now they changed the magic skill in suikoden 5 to only add number to your base magic stat, which was worse, but they could go back to the percentage, and possibly amp it up for higher levels of proficiency. Another option one could implement at the same time, or separately would be to make the base spell for every rune a support type spell, which would always be useful, for example the first level fire spell could bestow berserk on a character, while the first level lightning spell could increase a character's speed, alternatively, they could add fire/lightning damage to a character's regular attack.
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Runemaster
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Re: Modernizing Suikoden

Post by Runemaster »

ninjaluc79 wrote: For example, the Lv1 Lightning spell should do 1.2x DMG [1.2*(MAG + WPN ATK - MDEF)] instead of 150 DMG [150 + MAG - MDEF]. That prevents them from being underpowered late-game, and is especially useful for Fire Mages since you would only want to use the higher level spells against bosses so you can still use Flaming Arrows in normal encounters without any problems.

Clearly, the Physical and Magical sides of any game are very difficult to balance out without making one side broken. FF did that, but it made both sides broken.
This is actually an interesting idea. Although adding weapon attack overly increase the damage so i think magic is good.
Making MAG their basis for attack damage is extremely unfair for tanks and attackers. Mages have high magic, All Others have high attack, they both deal the same normal attack damage but mages can deal so much more power by casting spells?

I think mages really are meant to be useful significantly for boss battles while most offense characters are for normal battles. That, I think, kind of balances them out.

What I wold suggest is for an arrangement of the "Auto" option, much like the one on Grandia. Playing Suikoden II,the Auto is unfair for mages like Luc since they get to do nothing. There should be a settings for the Auto wherein you edit each, let's call them Auto Preferences, to choose for what each character (or each character on a specific formation slot) will do for Auto. There also should be a multiple "Auto Preferences" too since let's admit it; It's extremely tiring to keep choosing the same options fr fighting especially when grinding.

Another thing, I actually think the spell usage system for the game is okay I mean I do use Flaming Arrows and Level 1 spells for random battles since nobody uses them on random battles.

Finally, what I really want for Suikoden is to make battles, or at least boss battles, more difficult. I always have to restrain from equipping the best for my characters since it makes battles so not special. And even with regular equipments it still makes the game easy. So I'd appreciate a difficult Suikoden game.
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ninjaluc79
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Re: Modernizing Suikoden

Post by ninjaluc79 »

Runemaster wrote:This is actually an interesting idea. Although adding weapon attack overly increase the damage so i think magic is good.
Making MAG their basis for attack damage is extremely unfair for tanks and attackers. Mages have high magic, All Others have high attack, they both deal the same normal attack damage but mages can deal so much more power by casting spells?
Really? But most mage weapons have exactly 100 ATK by level 16. Assuming we have an 08 MAG character (~200 @ level 60), that's still 300 ATK, at par with the best attackers in the game. Like I said, this is to give them the ability to normally attack outside of battles so they get to do something asides Defend in Auto-Battles. Although Zerase comes into mind as one of the most gamebreaking Suikoden mages ever, that's a different story.
I think mages really are meant to be useful significantly for boss battles while most offense characters are for normal battles. That, I think, kind of balances them out.
Well, asides that, mages are also the Nukers of the party, which is better suited for Fire Mages. That bit you said is better suited for Lightning Mages since their spells are usually single-target. It's just too bad that the Fire runes are often the most useless elemental runes end-game. Sure, Lightning is useful vs bosses, but good luck with trying to hit a Lightning-resistant final boss.

Even worse, with gamebreaking physical attackers in the endgame, mages end up being the support characters, which I think is fair enough considering that most endgame bosses in history have absurdly high resistances against all kinds of attacks. Between a 1000 DMG from Hammer of Raijin and a 4000 NORMAL ATTACK DAMAGE, you know what you would pick. It's that hard to balance things out.

After all, if Flare does an abysmally low damage vs endgame bosses, you practically only have a hammer.
What I wold suggest is for an arrangement of the "Auto" option, much like the one on Grandia. Playing Suikoden II,the Auto is unfair for mages like Luc since they get to do nothing. There should be a settings for the Auto wherein you edit each, let's call them Auto Preferences, to choose for what each character (or each character on a specific formation slot) will do for Auto. There also should be a multiple "Auto Preferences" too since let's admit it; It's extremely tiring to keep choosing the same options fr fighting especially when grinding.
I thought they did that in Suikoden V...
Another thing, I actually think the spell usage system for the game is okay I mean I do use Flaming Arrows and Level 1 spells for random battles since nobody uses them on random battles.

Finally, what I really want for Suikoden is to make battles, or at least boss battles, more difficult. I always have to restrain from equipping the best for my characters since it makes battles so not special. And even with regular equipments it still makes the game easy. So I'd appreciate a difficult Suikoden game.
But not to the point of torture though. Suikoden doesn't have quite the share of bonus bosses which require unorthodox methods to defeat, but I'm okay with that. FF enemies are bad enough to make players pull out their teeth. Suikoden, not so much. You can pretty much select Auto-Battle all day, and that's boring. Personally, I want to do something asides Auto-Battle in normal battles.
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JiggleBiscuits
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Re: Modernizing Suikoden

Post by JiggleBiscuits »

I do not want Suikoden to be more like FF13.
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