well I think arguing about whether silent protagonist is better/worse is like trying to persuade people who prefer cabbage to choose turnip.
CC was designed like that was because this game is about choices YOU made affecting the future. If you add dialogues for Serge, you add your personal interpretation of how his personality should be. I mean, even if you make the same choice, there could be different reasons why you do that. And if Serge says different lines, the NPC's response might be different too.
We can never make everyone happy. But I still feel that a simple yes/no is going to leave the player left with something to be desired. Will people have different reasons why they pick certain choices? You betcha.
But, that doesn't mean that we can't try to inject a personality that most people will agree with, and sympathize with as well. Let's face it, even though there's 13 endings, Chrono Cross was never a game centered around choices. Sure, you had them, and a large amount of the game was different if you did/didn't recruit Kid - but I think it's pretty obvious this isn't a Skyrim-type game where your choices are the point of the game. This isn't a sandbox; Cross has a story to tell, and while there are story branches, it keeps you on more or less the same story path.
The choices in CC to me felt like they were there for the sake of choices - not for any rhyme or reason. That's what you get when it's just Yes vs. No.
If it helps to put it this way, imagine we had to start from scratch, and wanted a non-silent protagonist. There's a formula usually followed that dictates the type of person people would want to have as the main character, and his personality follows that. If we're giving Serge lines, I just want to give him a nuanced version of that.
While I agree that plot has a lot of issues and a lot of characters are just blank dummies, I personally can say Chrono Cross already has very good story. I also can't say Chrono Cross should be more connected to Chrono Trigger. It's 2 different games, even when they are both Chrono games. I also do not agree with "story - stuff that matters the most".
Look, what Chrono Cross actually is, as game? It reel of film with battles in specific places. You need to win in each part to procceed to the next part. Therefore, Chrono Cross = Story + Battle-System. Can you do something wrong at Story part? No, you can't. You also can't lose at Story part. Yes, you can to not do something right - in this case you will stuck in place till you do something right (i.e. going to Cape Howl when Leena said to do so). See? Game almost absolutely linear, you can only choose in which order to talk with NPC's. Simplifying this, no player input required on Story side of the game. You read dialogs, then the battle begins, this is where another part starts, where player input matters the most. Well, it should matter the most, because you have tons of options on your path to victory, but in reality it doesn't matter at all:
- Attack order (1/2/3 - you don't care about Chance to Hit, you win anyway
- Grid Management
- Elements management and order
- Equipment management
- Character Selection
- Status effect - half of them not work at all, other half just useless
- Elements itself - many of them are useless, partially because of previous point
- Field color - no one care, you win anyway
- Currency, crafting components, consumables, innate color, trading shops
I can continue this list infinite. See, half of the game (story) has problems, but another half (battle) is itself a biggest problem, everything about it is just wrong, everything is bugged (A LOT of them), not working correctly and etc.
Only some of these issues can be solved by fixing numbers, so the main point to rework almost everything about battle-system, No aspect of it should be useless anymore.
I think you're assuming player input is the most important part of the game. In theory, you're correct. But let me ask you, how many people play an RPG, and say 5 years later "I have fantastic memories of those battles..." - you don't. Like you said, the battles were there in between parts of the story. If it was all cutscenes, people would get bored in the first 5 minutes.
So I think we have to ask, were people unhappy with the battle system? Read reviews, check out critics - people called CC easy, but few had major issues with the battles - at least enough to detract from the story.
Is it perfect? Heck no, I discovered bugs and ways to consistently win that people don't even know about today. I think the battle system needs a lot of work to be great. But it wasn't the main focus for me playing the game.
You know what, let's look at the the game dubbed "the best RPG of all time", yeah? Chrono Trigger. The battles had no strategy, half the techs were useless, and even boss battles were boring.
Yet, it's "the best RPG of all time." Why? Why do people award the game with this title when the battles aren't even average, at best?
It's because when people play old-school RPG's, many of them want story. The battles aren't what they're going to remember - it's the story, atmosphere, and characters of the darn thing.
So should we try to fix battle loopholes and the sloppy work the devs did when making this game? Yes. But how important it is should depend on how much people complained about it, and not many did. Most just went through the easy battles as a little something to do while enjoying the rest of the game.
People will remember things about a game's story, characters, motivations. Rarely do I see a battle system make a game memorable - even in cases such as Etrian Odyssey. And I haven't seen enough people criticize the battle system to think that it plays a vital role in this game.
Just on this note, even if we do have all the problem you mentioned fixed, there's still the main problem that plagues every Final Fantasy, Chrono Trigger, and pretty much every other RPG in existence - characters don't rely on each other unless it's for healing purposes, and instead of being a 3 person party, what we really have is 3 parties of 1 individual each trying to beat the enemy on their own. At best, we can make Chrono Cross's battle system as good as the regular RPGs' - which aren't very memorable either.
Ah, one more thing. I agree with you that the story is very good on its own (though the pacing could be better). And I absolutely believe it should be separate from Chrono Trigger - I don't get the people who claim it was supposed to be a direct sequel, when it wasn't. I'm perfectly fine with the way Chrono Cross is on its own.
But there's story and then there's story. It has a solid story, but I think it can be upped a tier if we really make the characters essential to that story, and have each one of them a reminder of certain parts of CC's world.
It goes from a good action movie to a heartfelt one. Ask any movie critic, there's a massive difference.
Well, scenario overhaul is not an easy task too. I not only need to "add dialog lines", but also new scenes for blank characters with all the stuff, small things like timing, positions, animations, etc, and also the scenario itself. You also have to be careful and not to break anything that is working already. But yes, everything is possible to do.
I was worried about the poses and scenario... It definitely isn't easy, I know. I'm just glad it's possible.
Complex battle improving is not about "add cool techs", but, anyway, I said, I agree that there are a lot of place of imrpovement on Story-side.
Just because I said something like "Battle-System is my focus for now", it doesn't mean I don't care about story. There is still a lot of work to do, there is still a lot of manpower needed. After so many years I don't think there will be a lot of mods released in the future, so we probably need to work all as one. We that small community I think we are capable to either create one good modification or nothing at all. No point to split our resources/people, you know. If you think there will be scenario writers of something like that - we definitely should look at their work and then every quality piece should be included in the game.
However, I think there are issues too. Players probably won't like extended stories around characters they already like. I mean, everyone will notice improved "Turnip" story and still be okay or even happy with that, but if you add/change something about already loved character (I don't know, maybe Kid/Harle for example) then there are obviously will be people who thinks negatively about it.
TLDR:
I think battle-system problems are bigger problems for now, but every other aspect of the game (Characters/Story/etc) should be improved aswell. If battle system would not that bad, I could jump to scenario improving immediately. Yet you can start to write (or dig through Alfador[/b/]'s material) something about characters which has little or no story.
From your other post:
We don't want to turn CC into Radical Dreamers - I do think adding bits of text at certain points consistently will add up in the long run, rather than a wall of inevitable text. If it's something that can only be viewed via a sidequest, a character explaining his position - even for a paragraph or two - is fine.
Absolutely agreed, some minor things here and there will quickly add up, you can even not notice it, but you will know about characters more than you did after some point. But yes, some scenes/sidequests stuff also good, if done correctly.
I wasn't trying to imply that you don't care about story. I just didn't see it mentioned in the thread so far, so I thought I'd bring it up. The "add cool techs" comment was a reference to some of the requests here, not to the work you were doing.
It's a small community, like you mentioned. And as time goes by, it just gets smaller. All the potential "scenario writers" and script editors will slowly move on because they think that if a script mod hasn't come out in 17 years, it probably isn't possible. And it would be a shame to lose them because of time delays. This game is old enough, and I think it's pretty apparent that if we need manpower, we'll need to provide an eye-catching incentive. Fixing up the battle system is fantastic, don't get me wrong, but if I'm anywhere near accurate to represent some of those who played this, it isn't the area where they would die for a CC remake.
Tell people that they can improve the story, in effect give life to the characters again, and we can get some 30 years olds to turn their heads and say "you know what? What the heck, let's give this a shot". People not in the Compendium community will come back and replay a mod only if they think its worth their time, and I'm just not sure how many will consider even a perfect battle system a reason to play this again.
Feel free to take your time. But the clock is ticking, if we could start this thing rolling, I'm pretty sure now is the time that would net us the most support and help in this endeavor. It doesn't require technical knowledge (on editing the script and lines, anyway), and that gives anyone a chance to help. On the other hand, battle refinement is something I couldn't help you with if I tried. Let me know what you think.
I know I said this before, but I really don't want us to lose to the test of time. Even if we wait only a year, more people will be gone and forget about CC by then. I don't want to change Kid, Harle, or any one of the other 3-4 developed characters - at least for a good while. There's plenty of blank characters, and they need improvement more than anything. Afterwards we can finetune the main ones cautiously if needed.
