It's time to Ask Konami about Suikoden 6

A place to post news and also give your ideas about the future of the Suikoden series.
Please justify all speculations with reasons why you think such an event could happen.
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KC_MCDOHL
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Re: It's time to Ask Konami about Suikoden 6

Post by KC_MCDOHL »

Hello everyone!

Just to let you all know, the Suikoden Revival Movement is now officialy launched. This will be the main page where all fans can help to revive the Suikoden franchise. I aim to unite all other similar movements so we are all under the same banner. We also have help from Kotaku.com as well as some potential to work with Operation Rainfall and other sources.

Please join and spread
the word as much as you can! :)

KC

https://www.facebook.com/SuikodenRevival
RevKoden
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Re: It's time to Ask Konami about Suikoden 6

Post by RevKoden »

I wonder if a famous meme based on suikoden series, will revive the series...?
Nah...its impossible
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yuberluc
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Re: It's time to Ask Konami about Suikoden 6

Post by yuberluc »

i wonder why konami ignores us, are they don't know the suikoden fans all over the world and waiting for the next series??
Chaos will suit me just fine
LanceHeart
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Re: It's time to Ask Konami about Suikoden 6

Post by LanceHeart »

It's not so much that they're ignoring us, rather than they know there aren't enough of us left to make it worth developing and localizing new games.
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KC_MCDOHL
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Re: It's time to Ask Konami about Suikoden 6

Post by KC_MCDOHL »

Hopefully we can convince them otherwise. I believe we can convince them to revive the older games, at the very least.
eldrasidar
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Re: It's time to Ask Konami about Suikoden 6

Post by eldrasidar »

I would say part of the problem Konami has with Suikoden is that they honestly don't know how they would go about marketing it. I mean, when they released suikoden 4 for example, the top most feature listed on the box was, you could build a ship and fill it with mini-games!! OH MY GOD MINIGAMES!!!! You know there's a problem if your marketing begins by suggesting the player recommend is play a different game. In fairness, part of the issue is design of the suikoden games. Here are some thoughts on possible solutions that could be implemented:

Suikoden has 3 modes of combat: standard, duel, and war. This is a pretty unique approach. Out of these 3 though, only the standard battle system has been consistently solid. To date, the Suikoden team hasn't be willing to embrace making 3 solid combat systems. If one is going to market having them, they need to be comparably good to leaders in those types of games. Perhaps duals become more like 1 v. 1 ATB type battles similar in feel maybe to final fantasy 13, maybe war battles take on a feel similar to dawn of war. The more one can integrate the 108 successfully into 3 different combat systems, and make each combat system fun on it's own, the better. Obviously, the main feature of suikoden has been it being a turn based game and I think it should stay so, but the fact is that you need to at least create the appearance of things are happening even if nothing is. We don't have a gaming meta where players want to see their hero standing around nonchalantly waiting for their turn as a bar fills up.

another way to improve gamer enjoyment is to give the player as much control as possible, while remaining user friendly. One of the biggest enjoyment flaws of suikoden 3 was that the player had very little control over the battles. Control however doesn't mean I need this to be an action RPG, but having a large amount of freedom when it comes to things like skills, equipment, combo's and runes, gives the player things to do and invest time into, and especially if you can see the effect(you know you change armor, the armor looks different) the better. Imagine if for example, a accessory you could equip on characters was a banner, that would maybe provide a small bonus in standard battles, and also a giant bonus in war battles, and looked completely awesome on the character's back, and then let's say there is a rallying skill that makes some character's get more bonuses out of the banner. As a player, I now have a lot of input into a character, and I'm seeing that investment paying off.

Making a headquarters: This is something else that should be pretty easy to market, but unfortunately, hasn't really yet been utilized to the fullest extent mechanically. Seems really simple to improve. You have an architect star of destiny, and at some point in the plot you get a piece of land or whatever to build/strengthen your home base. When stars of destiny join who might build a shop, or provide some kind of service/mini game, you see architect and go into a build mode, preferably with a fair amount of freedom to move things around, and you know, as you get X number of stars, the architect can come up with options for expanding the whole thing. Can easily make headquarters building a fun and rewarding part of the game. Perhaps your headquarters even generates its own economy, and one can spend potch to invest in that economy in some way, such as building improvements. Likewise, spending time on one's HQ could provide a combat benefit, particularly in war battles.

Runes: besides the collecting of 108 stars, the true runes are the key plot point of the suikoden series, and yet, you really don't see much of them in the games. While it might be nice to have at least some options with regards to choosing spells, I think more importantly, one needs to see runes in different situations. Suikoden 4 and 5 played around with a tiny bit, but you still don't see runes being used everywhere and anywhere, and for any sort of odd purpose. Presumably they should have a whole host of utility functions that simply haven't been explored. The more the designers explore, the richer the world is, and the easier it is to market the rich and full world the character's are immersed in.

108 stars: obviously meant to be the biggest unique feature. The success of Game of Thrones makes it clear that there is an audience for a fantasy genre narrative with a large host of characters. The important thing is that all 108 characters need to really be fleshed out, even more importantly, the villains need to be fleshed out. There should be characters that you shouldn't know whether or not they are going to end up being a star of destiny or a villain. There should be lots of rich NPC's that fill the world and provide a rich atmosphere. The 108 stars of destiny should have reasonable motivations for being in the stars of destiny, and they should continue to develop once they join, and one of the most enjoyable experiences for a player should be getting to know all the stars of destiny. The game should feel rich and full of characters, not cluttered with them.

summary: if Konami is going to make a suikoden 6, they need to provide their development team with the resources to make the game well. The fact is, Suikoden 6 should be a game that takes 72 hours to complete, and be enjoyable for many more without resorting to gimmicks like mini-games (a few is fine) or new game+ to replace actual content. That takes a large design team and time and money to do well. If they want to market it well, they need to understand it's strengths as a game: a rich world, with interesting characters, and a gripping story, combined with immersive player control and interaction with the world, the characters, and the story.
LanceHeart
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Re: It's time to Ask Konami about Suikoden 6

Post by LanceHeart »

I strongly object to Suikoden 6 needing to take 72 hours to complete. It took me an average of 25 hours to beat Suikoden and 30 to beat Suikoden II on my various playthroughs, which seems like the best length for such a game. Suikoden 5 took me 60 hours on my first playthrough, but having at least 5 of them be the introduction was beyond boring. It almost made me give up and declare it the worst game in the franchise.

Just make the next game tight and precipitous. Set things up, but don't dwell on internal politics with fifteen minute dialogue/cutscenes.
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eldrasidar
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Re: It's time to Ask Konami about Suikoden 6

Post by eldrasidar »

If I play through an rpg game in 25 hours, I usually feel cheated. Suikoden 1 and 4 I could beat in far less than 25 hours, and in both cases I felt like there was a serious amount of material lacking. Most of the really good RPG's tend to involve 40+ hours to play, and I don't mean because you got stuck in cutscenes for hours, or because you were stubbornly grinding to get that one item. I mean time that is spent playing through the game, exploring and progressing through the game at one's own pace. Obviously correctly designing the game so that the pacing is well spread is a challenge, but it's not impossible. I think that is a more appropriate amount of time for the suikoden series, because there is so much going on. 72 hours is probably an extreme, but with any good RPG I have played, I've easily devoted several hundred hours to playing around with them. Besides, if you're going to ask me to pay as much as a dvd box set for the game, I feel I'm entitled to have at least as much content.
Flufflez
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Re: It's time to Ask Konami about Suikoden 6

Post by Flufflez »

the length of a game is not a direct determinant of how good it is.
if a game is good, then you want it to be longer, because you don't want the experience to end.
new game+ is not a gimmick to get you to buy a game but a way to add replay value to a game. usually players want to be able to replay a game, but if it's a long game like rpgs tend to be, they want to be able to carry over some of the hard work they put into their first play through. mini games are the same type of thing. they don't replace content, but give you extra content to let you stay immersed in the world you've invested so much time in. both features are generally regarded as good things in the rpg world.
s1 for a full clear, no missables, without max leveling takes like 12-16 hours tops. s5 does start out really slow with a little too much focus on politics and dialogue in general. but both are still good games. the key to developing a successful story is to be able to integrate the large amount of information you need for a complex story into actual gameplay or cutscenes that are interesting enough to make you want to pay attention.
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Re: It's time to Ask Konami about Suikoden 6

Post by Antimatzist »

I completely agree with Flufflez.

Let's take e.g. Xenoblade Chronicles, which was the last console RPG I've played for a long time. After 85h, I'm still not finished. It lost quite the focus after some time with its fetch quests etc (which I wanted to do to clear the game near 100% in my first walkthrough). I need to take rests of playing this game (and with rest, I mean a pause of like 5 months) before I touch the game again. I still haven't finished it.

Also, I think the vast amount of mini-games is a total plus for me in the SUikoden series. I felt cheated after I completed Suikoden Tierkreis. Playing the game consists mainly of the plot + character recruiting + some optional quests. There was so little to do and the world felt empty. If they'd included a handful of mini-games, I would have liked it a lot more. This and the lack of New Game+ totally kill the replay value of the game (at least for me).
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sticky-runes
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Re: It's time to Ask Konami about Suikoden 6

Post by sticky-runes »

I think New Game + for Suikoden IV was one of its saving graces. I probably wouldn't have wanted to replay it as much as I have, if it didn't have new game +. And some of those mini-games were pretty good, even though I never actually understood what that bloody Ritapon was all about, the training room and mock battles were a very nice touch. Fishing net and treasure hunting were quite good as well. Of course, I would rather have had a richer story and extra quests that help flesh out the characters more, but these features do actually fit in with the world of Suikoden IV, with it being an ocean-based war story, so it wasn't like "playing a different game" during another game.

But new game + is a good feature for any game. It definitely adds to the replay value. With Tactics, it let us keep all of the S rank items, once we got them they were ours for life, and you could take advantage of them during the early stages to spice up the experience a bit more. With S5, it let us keep all of those formation abilities, whatever they were called, so I didn't have to go searching for them all over again. Overall, it's a nice incentive, being able to carry over a lot of content from your previous game. If I complete a game now days and find out that next time I want to play, I'll have to do EVERYTHING from scratch, I find that a bit of a turnoff, knowing that everything I achieved first time around is gonna go to waste.
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Re: It's time to Ask Konami about Suikoden 6

Post by Punkaiser »

Perhaps most of you haven't played Sengoku Rance but I still gotta say it's has an amazingly good NG+ system, the best I ever experienced. Not only the carry over feature, just imagine in the your first playthrough, you play the game with its main story and finish it. What does NG+ offer? You still start with the main story BUT at a certain event, NG+ lets you redirect the story to a new plotline. To be exact, in NG, you have only one story called TRUE ROUTE but in NG+ you're offered to play one of 3 IF ROUTES with each IF ROUTES change the story/ending even gameplay aspect as your available characters to recruit, your enemies, your playstyle ...etc...
As a gamer, I love to get that kind of NG+ in every game, but to think in developers view, it sounds like a big trouble and a lot of work to make these things available.

@Antimatzist: Despite how good Xblade is in a fresh game, I'd say it has the worst NG+ feature ever because the game+ carries over your characters level. I started a NG+ and quitted right away, what's the point of fighting some level 1 monsters with your level 99 characters right at the beginning?
eldrasidar
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Re: It's time to Ask Konami about Suikoden 6

Post by eldrasidar »

I never said there was a problem with having mini-games. I think I spent more time playing blitzball than anything else in Final Fantasy X. The point I was making was they should never be a selling point of a game(unless that game is say, mario party). It would be like marketing Ocarina of Time with the tagline: YOU CAN FISH! It was fun to spend time in Ocarina fishing, but that wasn't the reason I bought the game.

The reason I think of New game + as a gimmick is that what it adds is generally some combination of levels from previous play through and equipment from previous play through. These make the new game+ in my opinion far too easy. What new game + rarely adds is actual new content. I think the only new thing you could do in Suikoden 5's new game+ was use Georg for the final battle. If new game+ has actually new bonus material in the game, great. Otherwise, I'm perfectly happy replaying a fun game from the start without extra levels or items.
Flufflez
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Re: It's time to Ask Konami about Suikoden 6

Post by Flufflez »

can we talk about how blitzball was horrible? or is that too off topic?

i'm fine with mini-games being 'a' selling point as long as they're not 'the' selling point, which i don't think they were for suikoden 4.
the selling point of suikoden games has been and (hopefully) always will be: 108 recruitable characters, upgradable headquarters, 3 different types of combat, etc.
eldrasidar
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Re: It's time to Ask Konami about Suikoden 6

Post by eldrasidar »

well let's see, for the suikoden 5 box, there's no mention of the 108 stars of destiny(just says 60+ playable characters), no mention of a headquarters, and only makes mention of 2 of the 3 types of combats, although it doesn't specify that they are actually 2 different kinds.
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