What if... (Gameplay Questions)

[Nangbaby]

This might be in the wrong forum, but I couldn't quite figure out where to put this as this is pure speculation.

I know it would have been near-impossible due to hardware limitations, but what do you think Chrono Trigger would have been like had it used four party members instead of three party members. Would it have been too chaotic? What would Quad Techs look like?  What if it had also included a two-player mode like SNES Final Fantasy III?

I'm just throwing this out there. Any thoughts?

[Mauron]

Two player mode would get awkward with dual/triple/quad techs. If I'm controlling Crono and you're controlling Marle, what happens when I use Aura Whirl?

Four party members would have been doable with a reduction in sprite detail, more on FFVI's level. Each party member needed a unique sprite palette, and the SNES only has 8 available. FFVI was able to share palettes between PCs, which is why you could have all fifty bazillion on screen at once.

[Nangbaby]

I agree with you two-player mode would have been a mess because of the combination techniques alone. But to play the devil's advocate, I can also imagine how fun it would be if a player and his or her friend were playing the game they knew by heart and worked together and learned to work a system out between each other to co-operate.  In the same room with little lag, instead of these kids and their blasted Internet, it would be an exercise in frustration until synchrony ("SynChrono Trigger") is achieved, making the combo techs very meta.

There are other solutions to the "you stole my turn" problem, one of which is to require combo techs to require the consent of both players.  For instance, the first player selects it and the second player confirms it (assuming he or she controlls both characters), and if the second player denies it and a character whose ATB bar is filled, they can select actions from their own list. Yes, there is still a "wasted time" issue due to only having one selectable menu onscreen at a time and there are much more elegant solutions to the problem that has been created with opening up the Pandora's Box of a two-player co-op.

Concerning the idea of more playable characters in a party by itself, while the number of unique-palleted and animated characters (so many tiles) in Chrono Trigger wouldn't the battle system itself also cause problems?  As much as I love FFVI, the battlefield itself is static despite the deeper customization of the playable characters. By contrast, Chrono Trigger deals with enemy positioning and AoE attacks aside from the animation/sprite composition, and adding an extra figure on screen would complicate matters. Would it even have been doable within SNES limits and if so, if everything was pared down to a lesser complexity, how much would it still be Chrono Trigger?

Still, if in a magical world where it could have been done without sacrificing the aesthetic, I was imagining what it would be like, and was wondering what anyone else would have thought it would be like.  Just radically daydreaming...

[froodo]

I wonder if (considering a scenario where SNES-CD/Play Station was actually born) ALL the party members were used at the same time. Give the fact you will ALWAYS be back to End of Time no matter if you go with Crono Marle and Lucca, i think if this behavior would be the canonic,
even though subjective.

[Nangbaby]

In theory, that would be awesome...but something like that would necessitate both two-player and more importanly, separate screens, as I don't think one person could manage 7 characters at once and I can't even imagine how the menu would be set up to conserve screen real estate.  That being said, it would have been nice if the DS re-release offered a two-player mode where two players controlled two different parties at the same time. What if two-parties took on the same boss, not serially but at the same time? It might be outside the existing architecture of the game, but it would be awesome.

Still, I like the idea of everyone involved as a broad concept. Imagine if every character from every era went to defeat Lavos. Whether it be all at once, in separate parties, or even a character-switching concept (although character switching typically only works in a turn-based combat...to make it work in an ATB system is an interesting thought experiment in of itself).

[sqykly]

I used to play an MMO called Blade Hunter.  You shouldn't look it up yourself, it's dying, and the devs/owners (and many of its players) are cretins.  It was a pretty run-of-the-mill side scrolling brawler, like being in an early 90's arcade with a bunch of southeast asians you never would have met.  My point in bringing this up is that the most rewarding thing about playing this game was coming up with double and triple techs to do with my party mates.  Sure, lag and/or human error would screw things up once in a while.  But man, was it satisfying to dash across a room with my buddies and use my tech to suck up all the mobs into my filipino bro's massive slash attack.  Or for me & my thai friend to play volleyball with a boss with jump attacks after running out of MP so that he couldn't counter when he hit the ground.  There was no preset combinations of techniques, we just came up with them, and it was an absolute blast.

Therefore, I don't thing it would necessarily be broken to have multiplayer CT.  In fact I have thought about doing something like this with HTML5/ES6 since I need to master them and I have some detailed knowledge of how CT works.  You're right that it would be difficult to perform double and triple techs (god help you if you are playing with people who don't speak your language) but it would be practicable, therefore masterable, and therefore an awesome experience.