Issues that needs to be address on the next game

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suiken
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Issues that needs to be address on the next game

Post by suiken »

I won't include the handheld titles because, those games are limited compared to the main titles. Since the last title we picked up is V, let's list down the issues of in that needs to be resolve for the next title (if any).

Excessive encounter rate - This is seriously becoming annoying and tedious especially when you're on a lengthy dungeon. Strong monster doesn't help when you are running out of healing items/magics. It also kills the fun on exploration.

Overhead camera view - This view is acceptable....... in older generations and handhelds. Modern RPG characters are more detailed. The concept of the camera in S4 was good. Sandbox view is a good preferences in terms of character view whether it is a shooter or an RPG.

Lack of town/dungeon maps - This is another issue that need a serious address. I almost spent nearly an hour exploring Sol-Falena because I get lost on the town. And who are not frustrated in the twilight forest? I took forever just to take my party inside my ruins. Excessive encounter doesn't help either.

Graphics - Another weak spot that pulled the game from being a masterpiece. I know graphics is not the series' forte. But it need a great visual to be recognized. FFXIII gained a lot of attention despite is bad reception. Flashy means attractive but it's not everything. But it help gain new fans.
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sticky-runes
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Re: Issues that needs to be address on the next game

Post by sticky-runes »

I agree with suiken, especially about the camera view. Suikoden 4 got it right with the free-roaming camera. It allowed us to see the characters up close - Suikoden games are full of characters with intricate designs right down to their costumes and hairstyles. But with Suikoden 5's overhead camera, the characters just looked like a mess and we only got a good look at them during cut scenes and combat. I like a game that allows me to look at things up close in real time. Means I don't have to constantly refer to a website for concept art just to have a good look at the characters!

Suikoden 4 also gave us a choice of onscreen maps (which weren't entirely necessary since most of the locales were pretty small) but I've played many games that would have benefitted greatly from having an onscreen map.

I'm not a fan of excessive encounter rates either (one of Suikoden 4's major downfalls, sailing the high seas would have been far more pleasant if I could actually sail without being attacked by bats every 2 seconds, and that square in Na Nal Village - AGGHHH!) I think most of the suikoden games have been quite reasonable with their encounter rates (I daresay Suikoden 3's were too infrequent at times, but combat wasn't as fast-paced so it kind of worked out all right)
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ninjaluc79
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Re: Issues that needs to be address on the next game

Post by ninjaluc79 »

Never played any Suikoden past S2, but I think the Suikoden series in general is pretty generous with its encounter rate. I would rather have a balance between random encounter frequency and battle difficulty. Meaning, if you're going to make encounters infrequent, you have to make them difficult as well. Besides, selecting Auto-Battle, Run, or Let Go all the time gets pretty boring.

Graphics, hmm. Remember people saying that modern games are all about the flashy 3D graphics and not the gameplay or the story/plot? I mean, flashy 3D graphics are useless if your story or battle system sucks. If you're going to make a game with good graphics, don't make it a game with just good graphics. Give us a good story to tell or a better way to play an RPG.

The Suikoden series is a good example of a game that doesn't need eye-candy graphics to be considered good.
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Re: Issues that needs to be address on the next game

Post by Antimatzist »

Never played any Suikoden past S2, but I think the Suikoden series in general is pretty generous with its encounter rate. I would rather have a balance between random encounter frequency and battle difficulty. Meaning, if you're going to make encounters infrequent, you have to make them difficult as well. Besides, selecting Auto-Battle, Run, or Let Go all the time gets pretty boring.
Yep, they should balance it out for something "less frequent, more difficult". We discussed this countless times on the board already, but the way Suikoden handles battles is... unique. The Level System makes random encounters redundant at some point, except for farming Potch.

On a sidenote, the inclusion of Auto and Let Go was genious. While there are many battles, they are handled pretty fast most of the time. Compare that to e.g. FF IX whose battles take forever, including loadinc screens. Suikoden even topped that again with the inclusion of the Flash-Rune/Feature in later titles.

One thing I wouldn't mind: don't use the world map system again and use something more in the line with FF XII/Xenoblade Chronicles. I think this could make the Suikoden world even more interesting, visiting battlefields on your own etc.
LanceHeart
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Re: Issues that needs to be address on the next game

Post by LanceHeart »

suiken wrote:Graphics - Another weak spot that pulled the game from being a masterpiece. I know graphics is not the series' forte. But it need a great visual to be recognized. FFXIII gained a lot of attention despite is bad reception. Flashy means attractive but it's not everything. But it help gain new fans.
Great 2D graphics were the series' forte, far more than the graphics the games had in 3D. Unfortunately, a game full of HD 2D sprites is excessively expensive, which means we probably won't get another game to match the relative beauty of the first two games. Even if they went with cell shading, I've only ever seen one game truly blur the lines between anime and 3D renders (Ni No Kuni). I doubt Konami has the motivation or trust in Suikoden to do the same.
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sticky-runes
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Re: Issues that needs to be address on the next game

Post by sticky-runes »

Plenty of modern games do have great graphics and great stories and great mechanics. I mean, if a game series is selling well because it's got really exciting and innovative game play features, then the company making it is likely to hire the best animators and digital artists available.

Whether you prefer 2d or 3d, I think the suikoden games DESERVE to have good graphics, because it's got a lot to offer people who like fantasy and drama. We've got deep emotional scenes with family and friendships being torn apart by wars and cursed runes. We've got sweeping battles with warriors charging into each other and rune spells devastating the landscape. There's plenty of things going on in the Suikoden universe to fire up people's imagination, but the truth is, lots of gamers don't want to use their imagination. They don't want to play through a section of a video game and have to rely on their imagination to get the most out of the experience - the game designers are supposed to do that for us. We've reached an age where computer graphics are able to depict just about anything, and successful gaming franchises know how to take advantage of that.
suiken
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Re: Issues that needs to be address on the next game

Post by suiken »

LanceHeart wrote:
suiken wrote:Graphics - Another weak spot that pulled the game from being a masterpiece. I know graphics is not the series' forte. But it need a great visual to be recognized. FFXIII gained a lot of attention despite is bad reception. Flashy means attractive but it's not everything. But it help gain new fans.
Great 2D graphics were the series' forte, far more than the graphics the games had in 3D. Unfortunately, a game full of HD 2D sprites is excessively expensive, which means we probably won't get another game to match the relative beauty of the first two games. Even if they went with cell shading, I've only ever seen one game truly blur the lines between anime and 3D renders (Ni No Kuni). I doubt Konami has the motivation or trust in Suikoden to do the same.
We are not talking about the PS1 titles. I'm talking about the graphics of V which was bad compared to the graphics of IV.

The only way to force Konami in reviving the series is to make the JRPG dominant in the market again which is kinda impossible at the moment. But hey, Ni No Kuni set new standards for modern JRPG's. I bet the Suikoden team suffered from the lack of budget thus, unable to made it graphically pretty. I also believe that Konami pulled a Squaresoft on this one when they took the budget of Xenogears and transfer it to FFVII.

Suikoden didn't sell well not because it sucks. It have something to do with bad marketing. Releasing the game a week before Kingdom Heart 2 which was the most anticipated game at that time hurt SV. The bad reception of SIV didn't help either because that installment turned off some old and new fans alike. I bet that if Suikoden was advertised properly, this series would already have the stardom status like the FF series received.
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Neclord X
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Re: Issues that needs to be address on the next game

Post by Neclord X »

suiken wrote: Excessive encounter rate - This is seriously becoming annoying and tedious especially when you're on a lengthy dungeon. Strong monster doesn't help when you are running out of healing items/magics. It also kills the fun on exploration.

Overhead camera view - This view is acceptable....... in older generations and handhelds. Modern RPG characters are more detailed. The concept of the camera in S4 was good. Sandbox view is a good preferences in terms of character view whether it is a shooter or an RPG.

Lack of town/dungeon maps - This is another issue that need a serious address. I almost spent nearly an hour exploring Sol-Falena because I get lost on the town. And who are not frustrated in the twilight forest? I took forever just to take my party inside my ruins. Excessive encounter doesn't help either.

Graphics - Another weak spot that pulled the game from being a masterpiece. I know graphics is not the series' forte. But it need a great visual to be recognized. FFXIII gained a lot of attention despite is bad reception. Flashy means attractive but it's not everything. But it help gain new fans.
Excessive encounter rate - You serious? Excesive encounter rate on Suikoden? When? Excluding the lake ruins in SV and the damn ship on SIV everything had a proper balanced encounter rate. Running out of magic and health is part of the game you know. The world of videogames has become so easy that in some cases is not even fun. Of course you can play on highter difficulty, but normal mode should be...normal. IMHO normal mode was lost long ago since Normal is an easy mode where everything goes smooth but hard mode is a "nightmare mode" where enemies 1hit you.

Overhead camera view- Camera was a problem in SV, but the series doesn't really have a "camera problem". A nice camera is desirable of course.

Lack of town/dungeon maps Then again, do you really need the game take more your hand even more? Is not as if cities and dungeons were THAT big and complicated except labyrintic ruins wich point is...well, being a labyrinth

Graphics - Of couse the better graphic the better, I agree with you. However FFXIII is not a good reference since was quite SHORT for na rpg map was basically a long corridor. I want nice graphics but not at the cost of content. So I prefer a long average-looking game than an awesome looking short game.
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Re: Issues that needs to be address on the next game

Post by Antimatzist »

You serious? Excesive encounter rate on Suikoden? When? Excluding the lake ruins in SV and the damn ship on SIV everything had a proper balanced encounter rate. Running out of magic and health is part of the game you know. The world of videogames has become so easy that in some cases is not even fun. Of course you can play on highter difficulty, but normal mode should be...normal. IMHO normal mode was lost long ago since Normal is an easy mode where everything goes smooth but hard mode is a "nightmare mode" where enemies 1hit you.
Eh, every Suikoden suffers from that. Take also into account that battles become superfluous after some time.

Also, I'm with sticky-runes, I'm sick of the people that think that a game either has a nice story or great graphics. This isn't true and only because a game has a bad plot, it's not because they put "story"money into the graphics department. Suikoden needs to find their 3D-style, they experimented quite a bit and none of the PS2 games really made me happy.
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sticky-runes
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Re: Issues that needs to be address on the next game

Post by sticky-runes »

What I've always thought Suikoden should do is allow us to set unite attacks and technique runes (such as boar, falcon and shrike) to auto, so that characters use them when you use the auto command. It would at least make it more interesting than just watching them use standard attacks for the 5000th time.

Suikoden Tactics had a nice rune system and actually got us to think our way through battles without auto firing your way to the boss like the main games do with their dungeon levels, but I don't think the Strategy RPG thing really took off (I don't know if FF still do Tactics games?) but the board game style RPGs don't offer real time exploration, which I think a lot of RPG fans prefer.

My ideal Suikoden game would have the free roaming camera of Suikoden 4, with a refined combat system that uses the best parts of 3 and Tactics, and duels and major battles like Suikoden 5 (with improvements all around) All the 3d games have their good and bad points, but they just need to really get all the good points together and make them better!
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Neclord X
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Re: Issues that needs to be address on the next game

Post by Neclord X »

Antimatzist wrote: Eh, every Suikoden suffers from that. Take also into account that battles become superfluous after some time.
Really? I'm trying to remember but as I said excluding SCV lake ruins and the ship from SIV I don't remember a single dungeon in Suikoden series that made me feel there were "too much random encounters". Dungeons never were too big for starters and you had to fight like 1 or 2 times in each transition at much. You reached the boss after may be 6 or 7 battles perhaps? And considering the difficulty of the random enemies...I can't consider it "excessive counter rate". Excesive encounter rate are those were you have a fight each two steps. Also, with small dungeons like the ones in Suikoden series if you reduce the encounter rate would short substantially the game.
suiken
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Re: Issues that needs to be address on the next game

Post by suiken »

Neclord X wrote: Excessive encounter rate - You serious? Excesive encounter rate on Suikoden? When? Excluding the lake ruins in SV and the damn ship on SIV everything had a proper balanced encounter rate. Running out of magic and health is part of the game you know. The world of videogames has become so easy that in some cases is not even fun. Of course you can play on highter difficulty, but normal mode should be...normal. IMHO normal mode was lost long ago since Normal is an easy mode where everything goes smooth but hard mode is a "nightmare mode" where enemies 1hit you.
Please read what I said in the first post carefully before going on a rant.
I won't include the handheld titles because, those games are limited compared to the main titles. Since the last title we picked up is V, let's list down the issues of it that needs to be resolve for the next title (if any).
Get it? I only list down the problems of V, not the whole series in general.

If you don't experienced an encounter every 2-3 seconds in V, then we probably played different games. I can handle the difficulty myself without any problems. I was just pointing that out for newbie players who forgot to bring tons of medicine and already spent their magics before boss battles.
Neclord X wrote:Overhead camera view- Camera was a problem in SV, but the series doesn't really have a "camera problem". A nice camera is desirable of course.
Like I said, I only pointed out V. Otherwise, I agree.
Neclord X wrote:Lack of town/dungeon maps Then again, do you really need the game take more your hand even more? Is not as if cities and dungeons were THAT big and complicated except labyrintic ruins wich point is...well, being a labyrinth


You know that III and IV have on-screen maps, do you? That is one thing that shouldn't be remove moving forward. I already told you I almost spent almost a whole hour exploring Sol-Falena. If V at least featured an on-screen map, I wouldn't spend that long time in the first place. I wouldn't mind the lack of it if it wasn't for the huge towns in 5 and the awkward camera view.
Neclord X wrote:Graphics - Of couse the better graphic the better, I agree with you. However FFXIII is not a good reference since was quite SHORT for na rpg map was basically a long corridor. I want nice graphics but not at the cost of content. So I prefer a long average-looking game than an awesome looking short game.
I heard XIII was never supposed to be linear until they decide to port it on 360 so lots of contents are lost. We are on the same page. I also prefer content over graphics but younger gamers today are suckers for an eye-candy graphics. It hard to sell less popular game for such audience especially when your graphics are already outdated.
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sticky-runes
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Re: Issues that needs to be address on the next game

Post by sticky-runes »

Stocking up on healing items is a general precaution that all RPG newcomers have to learn, though. And in some ways it adds to the enjoyment - oh well, I f#cked that up. I better return to town and grab some medicines and try again. Then when you do pass that dungeon, you feel a bit more satisfaction from knowing that you overcame something that you were struggling with earlier.

One thing I'm glad Suikoden have done from day 1, though, is allowing us to heal downed characters with regular medicines outside of battle. I recently played a bunch of old RPGs from before Suikoden, and if somebody lost all their HP in combat, you had to either use expensive revival items, or make do without them until you reached a healing temple. This resulted in characters missing out on experience while your survivors were fighting their way to the nearest town, and cash that you're never going to see again because you had to pay for a one off resurrection treatment. Gotta love Suikoden for allowing characters to regain consciousness after battle, and walk off poison effects without having to go to a priest for healing. F#ck the gods!
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Re: Issues that needs to be address on the next game

Post by Antimatzist »

Neclord X wrote:Also, with small dungeons like the ones in Suikoden series if you reduce the encounter rate would short substantially the game.
Well, that's why I think they should raise difficulty and lower the encounter rate. So you spend more time with every fight, but fight less altogether. Breath of Fire V has decreased the encounter rate significantly compared to older titles (which also had uite a high random encounter rate) but each battle needed tactics and strategy.

Maybe they should just drop the random encounters and let you see the enemies on the map. Altogether, they should include more strategy to battles (while still retaining the classical RPG component, the series shouldn't shift to a S-RPG series altogether).
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sticky-runes
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Re: Issues that needs to be address on the next game

Post by sticky-runes »

There's a 5th Breath of Fire game??
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