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Indivisible: Lab Zero's Action-RPG! (General Discussion)

Yay we back. My heart can beat again.
 
Sorry if this was already answered, i didn't see anything in this thread so i'm going to ask.

1) The characters in the prototype don't have levels like most RPGs, probably because it was a prototype but... it never hurts to ask, is the game going to have a tradicional rpg leveling system?
2) Will it be possible to customize our characters somehow? With stats, equipments, extra skills... you know, things that Valkyrie Profile had.
 
Kima said:
Sorry if this was already answered, i didn't see anything in this thread so i'm going to ask.

1) The characters in the prototype don't have levels like most RPGs, probably because it was a prototype but... it never hurts to ask, is the game going to have a tradicional rpg leveling system?
2) Will it be possible to customize our characters somehow? With stats, equipments, extra skills... you know, things that Valkyrie Profile had.

Answers to the best of my knowledge:

1. The guys have said that leveling will be more like the prototype, with additional stats in other areas gained via exploration and an upgrade system. So lvling up like in the prototype will mostly just give HP and ATB gauge.

2. They haven't said much on that iirc. But this early in development who knows? Might wanna wait on the idea of customizable characters till they get farther down the line.
 
Kima said:
1) The characters in the prototype don't have levels like most RPGs, probably because it was a prototype but... it never hurts to ask, is the game going to have a tradicional rpg leveling system?
Levels, yes. Traditional? No. Gaining more levels won't solve problems by allowing you to tank damage like in traditional RPGs.

Kima said:
2) Will it be possible to customize our characters somehow? With stats, equipments, extra skills... you know, things that Valkyrie Profile had.
You mean like First Aid/Guts/etc? No, not really.
We're trying to have stat tweaking not be a big thing in this game, and player skill / combos / party design make up the majority of strategy.
Remember how all the mages in VP1 are the same, with reused spells for everyone? (And how all archers/heavy warriors/light warriors/etc in VP2 are the same except the main cast having 3-4 added moves? We won't talk about THAT...) For this game, everyone will be very different in combat, no reused nothin', so rather than sticking with a single party and trying to make them fit a given situation, we're aiming to have you craft your party around the situation. In line with the analogy, maybe one character has Guts and one has First Aid, but not everyone gets everything so if you want those advantages you use those characters.
 
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superj3 said:
what happnened btw?
the website was experiencing server issues. It made it were you could go to threads if you had the direct link to them but the main page/ people's profiles and the streamers page would not show up or work correctly.
 
I'm really looking forward to seeing how encouragement of diverse parties is gonna work, because I've been playing a number of JRPGs lately and for the most part I find a group and stick with it. The only one that really encouraged experimenting was Digimon Story: Cyber Sleuth (a wonderful 'Mon game with a mature twist) due to how your reserve battlers were placed in a Farm and would just level up as you played. Only problem was that it's super abusable - you could literally just leave your game on all day and they'd keep gaining levels. The only stipulation was that every two hours you'd have to restart the "training" regimen.

I can't wait to see what sort of balance is achieved with Indivisible.
 
Mike_Z said:
Levels, yes. Traditional? No. Gaining more levels won't solve problems by allowing you to tank damage like in traditional RPGs.


You mean like First Aid/Guts/etc? No, not really.
We're trying to have stat tweaking not be a big thing in this game, and player skill / combos / party design make up the majority of strategy.
Remember how all the mages in VP1 are the same, with reused spells for everyone? (And how all archers/heavy warriors/light warriors/etc in VP2 are the same except the main cast having 3-4 added moves? We won't talk about THAT...) For this game, everyone will be very different in combat, no reused nothin', so rather than sticking with a single party and trying to make them fit a given situation, we're aiming to have you craft your party around the situation. In line with the analogy, maybe one character has Guts and one has First Aid, but not everyone gets everything so if you want those advantages you use those characters.

So... We'll choose our active party like we choose the best equips/jobs/skills for each situation in other RPGs?
 
DukeMagus said:
So... We'll choose our active party like we choose the best equips/jobs/skills for each situation in other RPGs?
Basically, yes. The characters and the way they interact are your choices, as well as Ajna's weapon. So if you're gonna make a choice, that's the one you can make. :^)
 
Mike_Z said:
For this game, everyone will be very different in combat, no reused nothin', so rather than sticking with a single party and trying to make them fit a given situation, we're aiming to have you craft your party around the situation. In line with the analogy, maybe one character has Guts and one has First Aid, but not everyone gets everything so if you want those advantages you use those characters.
I actually have a question about this. I'm playing Bravely Second right now, and they tried and failed to create the kind of system you're talking about. The game creates these situations like "hey magic is super good now, use a party of all mages" then in the next room "ok magic sucks now, it's only physical attacks". They want you to be constantly changing classes to deal with the situation. The issue is classes don't start with every ability, you have to level them up first. Classes also prefer different equipment (archers want a bow, etc) so if you don't have that equipment you have to buy it, which means grinding for money. Spells also aren't free, you have to buy those too. A few classes also have material components you have to buy to use their spells. The end result is if you run up against a problem that your current set of classes can't solve, you have to do a lot of grinding.

So my concern in Indivisible is like, say I run across a boss and I get stuck and I think, maybe I need Vasco for this, but I've barely used Vasco all game. How screwed am I? Will Vasco have all his abilities out of the box or will I have to grind to level him up?
 
mcpeanuts said:
I actually have a question about this. I'm playing Bravely Second right now, and they tried and failed to create the kind of system you're talking about. The game creates these situations like "hey magic is super good now, use a party of all mages" then in the next room "ok magic sucks now, it's only physical attacks". They want you to be constantly changing classes to deal with the situation. The issue is classes don't start with every ability, you have to level them up first. Classes also prefer different equipment (archers want a bow, etc) so if you don't have that equipment you have to buy it, which means grinding for money. Spells also aren't free, you have to buy those too. A few classes also have material components you have to buy to use their spells. The end result is if you run up against a problem that your current set of classes can't solve, you have to do a lot of grinding.

Some things with this

1. The Caves with that switching party gimmick that you described, imo, actually was fine. Most classes start with their primary action that you want to use, and Job Levels don't affect stat levels much, so right out of the box you should always generally be fine with switching jobs to fill roles decently unless you *must* have firaga/curaga/high level magic unlocks. It also, to me, strikes the perfect balance of being a challenging enough area where you have to change configurations, but its not "Boss level" hard where you'd need to level everything decently to stand a chance.

2. Bravely Default's design works by having multiple solutions to every problem, so it should never be a case of "I NEED 4 black mages for this 1 fight crap I need to grind to get Blizzara". Enemy has too high of a physical defense? There are multiple stat buffing/debuffing abilities across multiple classes or just straight up physical defense-ignoring attacks to use so physical classes can manage most every situation. For reverse situations, Spellcraft basically is a giant toolbox for Magic classes, and is like one of the starting abilities you gain from Wizard so its not a far grind.

There was only 1 boss I had to grind for, which was more of a case of the boss having some unclear design problems I felt. For everything else, I felt the game was fine with encouraging experimentation, especially given the other benefits they added like Favorite Macros.
 
fenster said:
Some things with this

1. The Caves with that switching party gimmick that you described, imo, actually was fine. Most classes start with their primary action that you want to use, and Job Levels don't affect stat levels much, so right out of the box you should always generally be fine with switching jobs to fill roles decently unless you *must* have firaga/curaga/high level magic unlocks. It also, to me, strikes the perfect balance of being a challenging enough area where you have to change configurations, but its not "Boss level" hard where you'd need to level everything decently to stand a chance.

2. Bravely Default's design works by having multiple solutions to every problem, so it should never be a case of "I NEED 4 black mages for this 1 fight crap I need to grind to get Blizzara". Enemy has too high of a physical defense? There are multiple stat buffing/debuffing abilities across multiple classes or just straight up physical defense-ignoring attacks to use so physical classes can manage most every situation. For reverse situations, Spellcraft basically is a giant toolbox for Magic classes, and is like one of the starting abilities you gain from Wizard so its not a far grind.

There was only 1 boss I had to grind for, which was more of a case of the boss having some unclear design problems I felt. For everything else, I felt the game was fine with encouraging experimentation, especially given the other benefits they added like Favorite Macros.
The caves is absolutely not the only place in the game where this happens, although it's the best example of it. I just got to an area where one of the random enemies will counter attack you for all your health if you hit them with something other than magic.

Something else I forgot to mention, you get stat bonuses based on your current class. Yew has spent most of the game as a wizard and when I tried to switch him to a ninja I found he was doing way less damage than other characters with the same level, class, and equipment. That's garbage.

I will probably not finish Bravely Second tbh, hella bored of it
 
mcpeanuts said:
The caves is absolutely not the only place in the game where this happens, although it's the best example of it. I just got to an area where one of the random enemies will counter attack you for all your health if you hit them with something other than magic.

Something else I forgot to mention, you get stat bonuses based on your current class. Yew has spent most of the game as a wizard and when I tried to switch him to a ninja I found he was doing way less damage than other characters with the same level, class, and equipment. That's garbage.

I don't remember those enemies, but fwiw I never used magic too much in my playthrough (cause Spellcraft IMO was way too good). Does blind work? Cause that's probably what I did if so. And there are still other ways to deal with that, from just hearing about it.

I'm definitely sure that you aren't right on the stat bonuses mattering too much. I shifted regularly throughout all classes for all my characters (aside from most magic ones), and while each character does have base stats to affect damage, it ultimately never mattered more than 100-200 damage at most. Are you sure that you had the same abilities setup in comparisons as well? Cause those can make a difference too. It was the same in Bravely Default, though Job Levels did tie into stats more there but it was still very minimal.

(not that I blame you for dropping the game, since there are other issues I have with it as well)
 
fenster said:
I'm definitely sure that you aren't right on the stat bonuses mattering too much. I shifted regularly throughout all classes for all my characters (aside from most magic ones), and while each character does have base stats to affect damage, it ultimately never mattered more than 100-200 damage at most. Are you sure that you had the same abilities setup in comparisons as well? Cause those can make a difference too. It was the same in Bravely Default, though Job Levels did tie into stats more there but it was still very minimal.
Literally everything was the same except for base stats and the fact that Yew was hitting for half the damage
 
mcpeanuts said:
I actually have a question about this. I'm playing Bravely Second right now, and they tried and failed to create the kind of system you're talking about. The game creates these situations like "hey magic is super good now, use a party of all mages" then in the next room "ok magic sucks now, it's only physical attacks". They want you to be constantly changing classes to deal with the situation.
I dunno about THAT level of it, I don't think we'd ever do it per room, but like "this dungeon hates plants" or whatever.

mcpeanuts said:
The issue is classes don't start with every ability, you have to level them up first. Classes also prefer different equipment (archers want a bow, etc) so if you don't have that equipment you have to buy it, which means grinding for money. Spells also aren't free, you have to buy those too. A few classes also have material components you have to buy to use their spells. The end result is if you run up against a problem that your current set of classes can't solve, you have to do a lot of grinding.
Each character has their three attacks; you may have to earn the 2nd and 3rd but that wouldn't take very long, like would be probably be based on how many times you use their existing ones rather than leveling, and wouldn't lock your supers anyway. There isn't purchaseable equipment - there's no money - and so far we've avoided having any consumables at all...think Super Metroid rather than SotN. Leveling is more about bar speed and number/availability of attacks, rather than stats.

mcpeanuts said:
So my concern in Indivisible is like, say I run across a boss and I get stuck and I think, maybe I need Vasco for this, but I've barely used Vasco all game. How screwed am I? Will Vasco have all his abilities out of the box or will I have to grind to level him up?
He may do a bit less damage/have fewer attacks, but at the very least his supers will do what you want him for (armor piercing? or whatever).
You should never have to grind levels specifically, like, ever. And like I said, no money.
 
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possibly silly question, is Indivisible going to be getting its own forums?
 
I for one would prefer a section rather than an actual fourm. Would probably be a bit cheaper than setting up a new domain and would be easier for existing users.
 
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@ no consumable.
No tapir burgers for you Ajna. Roti doesn't have to run away anymore. :)
 
I think Peter said before that 505 was going to be setting up an Indivisible forum at some point. Since it's been a few months, I'm guessing it must be something they weren't planning to do until closer to release. There'll be a lot more buzz around the game by then, so that would make sense.

We actually discussed that topic here before I believe. I still think having Skullheart as the SG/LabZero hub is important, but setting up a separate Indivisible forum would be fine as a way to respond to Bug Reports and stuff. It might also be a quicker way to pool together some of the followers on the fringes of Facebook/GAF/Tumblr/Twitter/etc. that are only interested in Indivisible, but obviously that crowd is very small right now.
 
That's why I think it should still be a section rather than a new fourm after all wouldn't be better to have a big report in a same section rather than a totally new forum? If we made a separate forum and use it for things like bug fixes that means anyone here would have to make a brand new account of the other forum to report a bug rather than going to the Indvisible section and reporting the bug.

Edit: or if they were to create a new forum they could create the ability to link/share accounts between this forum and the Indvisible one which could cut out the hassle of making a new account.

Although I'm not sure how that would work or if it's even likely.
 
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Man I don't know I kind of like this super long thread. But I'm more in favor of above because I like everything in one place
 
I don't see a need to have a completely separate site just for Indivisible. Might as well just expand the one we already have into a general Lab Zero forum,
 
Not-So-Saint said:
Easier for Mike too.
Well, there's a chance that 505 might not even want certain LabZero staff to post directly on that forum, just PR folks. I doubt they would do that, but it's not really our call either way. We'll just have to see what happens.

Speaking of redundant forums though, has anyone else ever gone back to look at the Skullgirls section of SRK? It's really eerie there now, like walking through a time capsule. You still got all those posts of people patiently waiting for SDE.
 
KaboomKid said:
Well, there's a chance that 505 might not even want certain LabZero staff to post directly on that forum
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Mike_Z said:
For this game, everyone will be very different in combat, no reused nothin', so rather than sticking with a single party and trying to make them fit a given situation, we're aiming to have you craft your party around the situation. In line with the analogy, maybe one character has Guts and one has First Aid, but not everyone gets everything so if you want those advantages you use those characters.
So, does that mean the game will "force" you to use characters you don't particular like in order to succeed or will we be able to take our party of favourites all the way through? This makes me a little concerned that the incarnations will be just tools you pull out when you have to rather than "companions" in your adventure that you actually want to use and choose to have with you.

Inevitably, individual players will seperate the cast into those they like and those they don't like. If you HAVE to whip out an incarnation you haven't really used throughout the whole game just to pass a certain section, won't that feel more like a drag?

Edit: I don't mean to sound like I'm criticizing you guys' design decisions, I'm just curious about what sort of approach you'll take to these sorts of things. I've watched a number of videos of the prototype and it looks really awesome, I'm a huge fan of VP1 and I'm really excited to see what lab zero turns the final game into.
 
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Beta Ray Bill said:
So, does that mean the game will "force" you to use characters you don't particular like in order to succeed or will we be able to take our party of favourites all the way through? This makes me a little concerned that the incarnations will be just tools you pull out when you have to rather than "companions" in your adventure that you actually want to use and choose to have with you.

Inevitably, individual players will seperate the cast into those they like and those they don't like. If you HAVE to whip out an incarnation you haven't really used throughout the whole game just to pass a certain section, won't that feel more like a drag?
You know someone's going to do a "solo Ajna fists-only run." Chances are you can use a sub-optimal party, but it'll be harder than if you don't.
 
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Yeah. Like, you can go through the prototype spamming up-attacks, but knowing which attack is best for which enemies results in quicker kills and an easier time.
 
We have to keep in mind that status effects are planned/being considered in the future, at least from what I've read somewhere here (searching for a post in threads like these is quite discouraging but I should look it up). I hope this game won't have the "only damage is relevant" flaw in combat mechanics. I like when there are options on how to fuck with the enemy. Remember that spells are planned for sure.
 
Beta Ray Bill said:
So, does that mean the game will "force" you to use characters you don't particular like in order to succeed or will we be able to take our party of favourites all the way through? This makes me a little concerned that the incarnations will be just tools you pull out when you have to rather than "companions" in your adventure that you actually want to use and choose to have with you.
Beta Ray Bill said:
If you HAVE to whip out an incarnation you haven't really used throughout the whole game just to pass a certain section, won't that feel more like a drag?
I see this type of question a lot and it's weird to me.

There will never be a thing like "nobody besides Vasco can beat this boss, even though you have 8 other characters to use". If that's what you're afraid of, don't be. Vasco might be EASIER to use because of armor-piercing bullets or whatever, but it won't ever be "everyone else does no damage except him". There might be a story fight where you only play as Vasco (I have no idea!) but at any point where the player has a choice, we are not going to artificially force one choice.

HOWEVER.

No game can accomplish all three of "make every party member useful but different" and "make other things beside just doing damage matter" and "let you use any party members you want at any time" with equal amounts of success. That should be a duh by now. If every party member is useful and different, and things beside damage are important, there will be some parts where one character is better than another.
We will never force your party into any specific arrangement. Which characters (besides Ajna) are available via the plot is, of course, up to us. Beyond that, you're never required to use a specific party to win a certain fight. [edit] Or to progress past a certain area, because only Ajna is present in the platforming part. :^)

Some parties will be better, though, that's the duh.

If you would like to make life extra difficult for yourself by choosing a party with all fire attacks in the fire location, just because you hate the water characters, that's fine. You're allowed. We can, and will, make all choices possible for players. But there IS NO WAY to make all available choices equally GOOD. (Unless they are all functionally equivalent, in which case the choice is no longer meaningful, like in Wild ARMs 5 where you can make anyone have any set of abilities at any time, or duplicate ability sets to make everyone the healer.)

That's the damn approach.

I would also like to say that FF4 is a spectacular game specifically BECAUSE they forcibly limit your party members at all times, which allows them to make the bosses much more puzzles than hit-me-a-lot fights. Remember that.
 
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Mike_Z said:
FF4 is a spectacular game specifically BECAUSE they forcibly limit your party members at all times, which allows them to make the bosses much more puzzles than hit-me-a-lot fights. Remember that.
Wait... I was supposed to use the ninja to run away from all the fights in the final dungeon, and then let my wizard die in the final boss so I could keep everybody else alive?
 
So just so I can understand. As long as I create a diverse team (like water Mage, fire Mage, fighter, healer, etc.) I should be fine? I wouldn't have to rely on a certain party member? That sounds fine sounds like basic RPG party building.

However while I highly doubt it will happen I hope there's not a party seperating event. I've played a couple RPGs where the party members need to split up and now I'm stuck with an under-leveled team of characters I never used. Hate those types of things.
 
Magma442 said:
So just so I can understand. As long as I create a diverse team (like water Mage, fire Mage, fighter, healer, etc.) I should be fine? I wouldn't have to rely on a certain party member? That sounds fine sounds like basic RPG party building.

However while I highly doubt it will happen I hope there's not a party seperating event. I've played a couple RPGs where the party members need to split up and now I'm stuck with an under-leveled team of characters I never used. Hate those types of things.
Eh, if they let you pick your split it's not so bad. Final Fantasy 9 had a part where you have to select a team for an anti-magic castle; I've always been pleased by guessing I'd have to use the remaining magic-heavy team afterwards, and leaving my mana-restoring melee monk character with the mages. FF8 also let you pick your split for the final dungeon and was fine, especially since you can re-form it for the boss.

The Penny Arcade games also kind of got around this problem by strictly controlling your enemy encounters and letting you reallocate the power you gained at-will.
 
I won't say anything about what "should be fine", since the idea is that we WANT you to switch characters. You CAN choose not to, we do not force you to switch, but if you choose to try sticking with the same three characters for the entire game it will be harder than if you switch, because (if we do the design properly) there won't be any single team that's better in every area.

I'm really done answering this question, I think my explanation was pretty clear.
 
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I like the idea from before of getting a bonus for bringing out characters you haven't used in a while. Carrot is always a lot more fun than stick.
 
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