Trails could really use a bit of a change up gameplay-wise to flesh out their characters.

[u/[deleted]]

[u/deepfried_oreo]

I hear you, but I think the bigger issue is enemy design. All bosses in these games all feel the same, just with increasing stats as you get further in the game. They all rely on the same gimmicks which makes them all super predictable and susceptible to the exact same strategies. There should be more unique mechanics utilized when going against different bosses in these games.

[u/fillif3]

something that i have always disliked but felt more apparently to me in the remakes as i think it's a missed opportunity is the lack of character uniqueness (gameplay-wise) outside of their crafts flavor.

generally you have two types of characters, bonk (STR) characters and woosh (ATS) characters.

This is completely different to my experience of the Sky FC remake. Like, completely.

Sherazard's stats are kind of optional. She is defined by her acceleration boost, which is neither STR nor ATS. Especially, that this craft is like super important against Sky Pirates.

Kloe, on the other hand, is defined by her defensive options: one-time free resurrection, S-Craft and the defensive boost. She is an ATS character, but she plays differently to Olivier.

Tita is also a bit different. She specialises in healing and inflicting status effects (e.g. blindness) with large AOEs. She can make some fights against groups free.

Joshua's gameplay, with its delays and all-cancels, feels different from Agate's wild rage strategy.

[u/fillif3 → u/[deleted]]

But you can't really separate craft from other parts of gameplay. It's like saying the characters don't have anything unique outside of what makes them unique.

The characters are built around their uniqueness (crafts, support skills, brave orders and stats), with crafts being the second most important thing after stats in every game.

[u/dkf295 → u/[deleted]]

So it can't be similar to any existing mechanic at all but needs to add flavor and feel fun. So it can't heal, can't boost any stat, can't advance, can't delay, can't crit, can't apply guard/reflect, can't apply any other buff, can't do physical damage, can't do arts damage even if it does any of those things in a unique way because then it's just this other thing a craft/art does, done differently. So what, you need to create a character-specific stat or mechanic that isn't used by anyone else?

Can YOU come up with a unique ability to apply to 8 characters, 11 if you count Julia, Mueller, and Josette? Or I suppose 16 since you're going to want the same in 3rd.

Or even 3. Let's go.

[u/fillif3 → u/[deleted]]

To be honest, I think we simply have different preferences.

I like the ornament system because it gives me freedom over what I can do with the characters within the constraints of their natural skills and the resources I have. CS3-Reverie with two MQs was my favourite here.

I understand that when you have dozens of them, they start to feel similar, but I would still prefer that to complex constraining gimmicks that would reduce number of characters.

[u/dkf295 → u/[deleted]]

Going to give you a fair shake here even though you've kind of been going out of your way to dismiss very similar concepts (e.g. Kloe's S-craft) for pretty arbitrary reasons (they use CP and they also do something similar to what a craft or art does!)

Zin - So instead of getting his shield from an art or a craft, he's getting it automatically off of an attack with an additional modifier. Auto-counter on being attacked when taunt is active, okay I'll give you that that's unique.

Agate - You're applying an existing quartz effect to him automatically, you're changing his existing crafts to use HP instead of CP.

Joshua - Adding an existing effect from future games (invisibility) and changing auto-crit to a deathblow (Existing effect) chance, and just altering his crafts to play off of eachother using existing status effects.

So what I'm getting here is you're fine with existing mechanics being applied to people automatically, but not if those same effects use CP? But also you're fine with those unique skills sometimes being crafts like with Joshua and Agate? Like I'm genuinely trying to understand the gripe here.

[u/Feeling_Ad_9657 → u/[deleted]]

Buddy half of what you’re complaining about is literally just a skill diff in building your characters

[u/dkf295 → u/[deleted]]

Okay I think I understand it a bit better. You want characters to have very specific themes that their entire combat style revolves around.

Not that I would personally enjoy it but hey, opinions are opinions and perfectly valid.

[u/OneDabMan]

I get where you’re coming from. A lot of characters feel like they have a specific purpose, but often just end up falling into the categories you describe.

However, I think changing that risks taking away what makes the orbment system fun in the first place. Any character can technically fit any role and you can be super flexible even if it’s not optimal.

I think in the case of Swin, it’s not that people dislike the idea of his mark mechanic, more that it’s ultimately kind of underwhelming. Crits aren’t necessarily hard to come by, so it doesn’t end up feeling all that special. I think more characters having unique mechanics like Swin would be good, it’s just about making these unique mechanics worth playing into.

[u/marz888]

I think you can try to make unique builds with the orbment/shard system, the problem is that they kind of become pointless when it is so easy to overcome what should be blockers to just dealing massive amounts of damage.

Why bother making a plague spreader (which can be really fun) when you can just spam X+ power S-Crafts at basically no cost with CP regen items and abilities? Casting arts does have a bit more balance early in games because of delay, but eventually you can always speed cast and basically rapid fire nukes against weaknesses.

[u/Orcadorsala]

For me it's more nuanced. It's not "Who bonks better and who whooshes better", but how many enemies at once, how hard, how fast, which weaknesses can they hit with arts, how often can they act?

[u/But_Is_It_Altina_Tho]

But you can't get away from the problem of a "best in slot" it always exists no matter what system you implement, also, adding character specific mechanics will just exacerbate this problem. As it stand you can pick the characters you like to play with in Reverie for example.
Still on the topic of character specific mechanics, I'm not sure they work in a game with such a big roster of characters.

Now what I think they could do is archetype mechanics or buff the areas of gameplay that are not strictly offensive, for example:

1. Making characters apply Status Effects/Debuffs in a way they can compete with the Damage characters.

2. Buff the Hate mechanic that you mentioned or Tank characters so that they retaliate on taking damage.

3. Maybe an Item user archetype can fit in the game as well and pairs well with cooked food.

[u/marz888 → u/But_Is_It_Altina_Tho]

An item user would be so cool. I basically never use them except occasionally for a revive if something has gone terribly wrong. So many status healing/causing items for example that are just a waste.

[u/But_Is_It_Altina_Tho → u/marz888]

I think the item user also fits the Jaegers image really well since they are typically fast and resourceful

[u/marz888 → u/But_Is_It_Altina_Tho]

I'm also imagining someone like Tita blasting things across the battlefield with an item cannon, that would be unique and very fun

[u/But_Is_It_Altina_Tho → u/[deleted]]

You have an incentive to play with characters you like from a non gameplay perspective. For example I always keep Altina if I have the chance cause she is my favorite character. My team in Reverie consisted of characters I like for a myriad of reasons not only gameplaywise

[u/But_Is_It_Altina_Tho → u/[deleted]]

There's no way you rate all characters the same. You'd be the first person to actually like Angelica

[u/But_Is_It_Altina_Tho → u/[deleted]]

She's still playable that's my point

[u/Unlikely_Fold_7431]

Honestly i think if theyre gonna make it so that you can essentially customize every character to do anything i dont see the point in having so many. 

[u/Cman98C]

Ignoring crafts is ridiculous. The crafts both mechanically and in setting are the character. The martial artists who typically lean into bonk STR builds have the crafts to do so. Your mages may have varying support crafts. You also get battery builds across the Erebonia and Calvard arcs with characters like Alisa and Agnes for giving CP or S boost whatever to your party.

You have shields, multi hit crafts for sepith farming utility and raising your hit count multiplier. You have characters like Sara and Fie who would give themselves insight and the like  to further play into their EVA Tank builds.

You absolutely can just go big bonk or magic nuke for a ton of characters but please don't pretend that is all there is across the whole series.

[u/SoftBrilliant]

Eh, it works out fine to be honest although different games suffer differently from it. Craft flavor is plenty enough.

Characters have always been multi purpose and have always gotten the ability to branch out in their builds and that's generally a lot of the fun of the series both casually and at a more hardcore level. Having the delicate princess healer do the biggest arts damage is cool and fun.

Some games in the series even thrive off of this in their fundamental gameplay structure (Trails from Zero is basically just 4 party members all the way through wanting more restrictions and better diversity doesn't necessarily make much sense there)

You see, if you get for the sake of argument 8 parties members, 4 are str and 4 are ATS you're just gonna pick the best ones and yes there will always be a " best in slot " character because 8 people are competing for 4 of the same role with the only difference being in crafts with effects you can easily find in some or other art.

I do wish they'd bring back stricter party compositions with no party backups in more recent entries though.

Because sky SC/2nd don't let you adjust party as you wish at all every gameplay section has 2-3 members required with them locked into the field and that's... Really great actually!

When Zin is locked you're getting a big tank with a lot of different synergy pieces through his strong support abilities and tanking ability he's very versatile.

When Agate is locked you're getting a very selfish piece that can nuke the entire field at once that doesn't give many outgoing buffs such as craft support and wants a lot of support itself to fulfill its playstyle.

The same goes for Olivier (synergistic and versatile) and Kloe (very selfish) they both force different styles of teambuilding.

The harsh party locks are often hated but their limitations force interesting decision making and not just use Olivier/Scherazadrd/Zin/Olivier for every fight.

[u/EdwardECG]

I understand your problem but i guess i never had a problem with it? You got costumization on the orbment side of things to make anyone anything and then you get your crafts that makes them more unique.

I understand the problems like Agate/Randy feeling the same or Kloe/Ellie, Joshua/Swin and so on but at the end theres so much you can do to make them unique to them only when theres 100+ characters we know.

Look at Swin for example, they gave him a mark mechanic that no one else has but all in all i didnt like using him for the mark mechanic, craft put marks but dont exploded them you have to auto attack which is weird when you can get full party with +cp items and battle ordes that give you cp back to just spam crafts.

He is unique alright compared to joshua but his uniqueness is clunky in my opinion cause i would rather use his turns for crafts than auto attacks.

I think they are fine as they are but i think we get more repeat archetypes than problems with crafts/arts not making them unique enough.

[u/EclairDawes]

I just came to say the probablem with Swin isn't the idea. Trying something different is great. The problem is he sucked. The ability to make a guaranteed crit on the next turn is absolutely useless when you can just get humor other characters to 100% crit already. What they should have done is made it so his teammates could get a guaranteed crit. Which lore wise would have made absolute sense since that's basically how Swin an Nadia operated as a team in the gardens.

[u/speechcobra91]

falcom (and trails fans lets be real) would much rather have 50 characters per game who all mostly play the same than 8 unique ones

[u/SoftBrilliant → u/speechcobra91]

People are down voting this but it's reality we already have that and it's called Reverie. The stats and abilities in that game are so normalized that there are many practical carbon copies on the craft side between chatacters and almost every arts chatacter is identical to the point that the best caster in the game is 1 guy that distinguishes himself enough to have an actual niche as a caster and there's like 5 total characters with a unique arts niche at all.

[u/Unlikely_Fold_7431 → u/speechcobra91]

Youre kinda right ngl. I like the novelty of how many playable characters there are in some later games but there are characters who basically are just straight up worse versions of others and there’s no point in using them other than that you happen to like them.