Gameplay and Hiring

I was milling around, trying to write for Viridia, when I realized that some of my characters are blatantly unimportant; I couldn't find a decent, lengthy story to attach to them! What do I do?, I said to myself. I don't wanna get rid of them, but I don't want to write for them either.

So then I got to thinking, why not have the main party just hire them? Once they've done their job for a chapter, they'll leave and I won't have to worry about them until the endgame. I mean, hiring heroes is a core mechanic of CUSTOM, and very few people actually use it. Even Vikings got rid of it after the first few updates.

So, how could I make hiring interesting?
It's really quite simple, I've figured it into a few steps.
1) Establish a contract.
When hiring, make sure that the hero party, the hired hero, and especially the player are all aware that this character is only going to be around for a short time, and will require a lumped paycheck ahead of time.
2) Make the investment worthwhile.
We already have a cast of perfectly usable characters that would do just fine without handing a small fortune to some nobody. Why should we care about her? Because she will be amazing in battle! Whether I give her a high starting level, ridiculous stats, or ridiculous growths, she has to make a good impression to be worthwhile. I want the player to dearly miss this person when she leaves the party, never to be hired again.
3) But, don't make a Game Breaker.
There must still be a downside to using this expensive, overpowered character. Luckily, a handicap is already in place by simply allowing another character on board; he will recieve a portion of EXP. Experience is pretty useless on an overpowered character, and that's potential experience you could have given to your permanent party to get them ready for the next chapter. If your team is not evenly leveled, problems will occur when the plot eventually forces someone on a solo mission. Hello, level grinding.
4) Be aware of Bosses.
There's some good and bad in letting a temporary powerhouse completely destroy the chapter boss. On the plus side, it's pretty hilarious to see, and it makes the game a lot easier. On the negative side, it saps all the strategy out of boss fights and gets boring after a while. And it makes the game a lot easier. Make your choice, and try to attach it to the story while you're at it, even if it's as simple as "I'm not fighting Godzilla, this isn't covered under my hazard fee."
5) Wrap it up well.
The end of the contract is just as important as the start. If the hired sword leaves for no good reason (and robs you of the pricey equipment you put on her) then you can expect a lot of fury from your players. Build up to the expiration date, make sure the player gets an obvious opportunity to unequip the guest star (or you could do it yourself with plotscripting) before she's gone for good. If she came with amazing equipment, this can become another perk for having hired her in the first place.

I hope this covers everything, I'll edit this later and add a picture or something. In the meantime, how did you use hero hiring? Got any stories to tell, or tips to add?

Also, I didn't think of this at first, but should I submit this to HamsterSpeak or the Wiki?

I don't think this is an appropriate downside, because it doesn't really relate to the mercenary's performance or effect on your team at all.

1) You could have the character that would be solo'ing alongside the merc, getting the EXP needed anyway.

2) Or even if you aren't using a merc, if the player doesn't know that they're gonna have to solo with a character, they might not know to give that character EXP regardless.

IMO, if your mercenary is so powerful that they're making bosses/the game a joke, then you've either made them too cheap to purchase and/or available too early in the game.

That, and if they cost a huge sum for an overpowered character, you may end up grinding for money and end up leveing up your characters to where they themselves could easily do the job anyway.

Hired mercenaries should be better than your characters, but I think they should be an alternative to buying equipment rather than being win buttons. Instead of buying new weapons & armor, you hire a mercenary to help your team through a place where you can find equipment in chests. This would be smarter gameplaying without breaking anything.

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<TheGiz> oh hai doggy, oh no that's the straw that broke tjhe came baclsb

Good points! I knew I was forgetting something balance-related. I can't wait to test everything.
Speaking of balance, another idea I had regarding bosses was to give the mercenary character a particular niche ability (brute strength, dodginess, NUKE-like magic) and then having the boss be completely immune to said ability (immune to physical attacks, 100% accuracy, absorbing elemental spells).
This also has the potential to be incredibly frustrating. I'll have to think of a clever way to inform the player.

Usually it's when a player realizes "wait, this isn't working" is enough.

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<TheGiz> oh hai doggy, oh no that's the straw that broke tjhe came baclsb

Sounds like you're trying to make Jeigan characters that you have to pay for...

Well, this is kind of implied, but this entire hiring process is completely optional. I'm mostly looking for something nifty to do with extra characters that would, otherwise, either be NPCs with a few bits of dialogue or PCs with very little to do with the plot.
I can only think of one case in Viridia where I'll force the player to hire someone, and that's just for his lockpicking skills. Even then, the payment'll be a key item instead of money.

That aside, yep! Jeigans for hire.

Make them closer to the actual Jeigan, at least the Shadow Dragon version.

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<TheGiz> oh hai doggy, oh no that's the straw that broke tjhe came baclsb

I haven't given this a ton of thought, but it seems like if you want hiring to be an attractive option at all, you'll need to make it pretty central to gameplay as a whole. I'm not going to spend my hard-earned GP to gimp my party in the long run unless there's a significant bonus. I'm not sure I'd even do it for free unless the fourth party slot couldn't be filled by regular party members (hint: I like this idea - automatic incentive to hire, right there).

Here are some ideas to make hiring more interesting:

- Areas that are only accessible with a certain character in the group (e.g. your lockpicking example). The rewards will need to be worthwhile.

- Areas with a somewhat unreasonable difficulty that are made significantly easier with a certain character (e.g. having an Elementalist negates environmental damage in the volcano).

- Shortcuts that can only be taken with a certain character in the group.

- A character with a suspiciously low hire cost who takes off with some treasure early into his contract. The party must chase him down and battle him to get it back. Upon winning, he [joins permanently|gives you a key to a secret area|gives you something better than what he stole to begin with].

- Characters with alternative hire costs (e.g. items, % of gold won from battles, certain favors). Characters who must be "unlocked" prior to hire.

- Relationships. Getting on a merc's good side might lead him to offer a discount in the future, and maybe eventually joining permanently. Mistreating a merc might make him unavailable for hire, and if he's mad enough, he might come around for revenge.

Short version: Do interesting things with your mercs.

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Mega Tact v1.1
Super Penguin Chef
Wizard Blocks

Your party won't get gimped, only one character out of four gets temporarily replaced, and by the time the merc leaves, your other three characters will have been better developed to help the fourth catch back up.

The only way you can get gimped is if the party member that gets replaced has to solo later on, and if you read my first post in this thread, this can happen regardless of the mercenary hiring system, so the game should account for this possibility anyway.

GP usually isn't hard to earn in RPGs, unless you make many efforts to prevent your characters from earning money. Again, like I said earlier a mercenary can be an alternative to buying equipment with the same GP, and you can find free equipment later in areas that the merc is helping you in.

What I'm trying to say is, that the benefits of a merc can greatly outweigh the negatives (which there aren't many assuming RPG is fairly standard for the most part.) I believe there's already incentive to use them, and making them interesting would, of course, make them more interesting.

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<TheGiz> oh hai doggy, oh no that's the straw that broke tjhe came baclsb

My point is that if you can go through the entire game without ever touching the mercenaries, a good number of players will do so. I don't see mercenaries as an alternative to equipment. If my wizard needs that new robe, he needs it before he goes into the dungeon where he'll get killed without it; conversely, the chests that I'd pick up with the mercenary are the same ones I'd be picking up otherwise.

Reserving the fourth party slot for temporary characters is not only an excellent incentive to bother with them, it also opens up interesting possibilities for those times when there isn't a mercenary in the party.

As for the rest, as you say, there is no downside to making them more interesting.

One addition: You will want to make it clear to the player what exactly a merc brings to the table. It'd be disappointing and off-putting to hire a thief, only to find out that he sucks at combat and there aren't any locked doors for him to open (or the other way around, even).

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Mega Tact v1.1
Super Penguin Chef
Wizard Blocks

I know this, but I would have this intentional to give different ways of playing. My idea comes from the perspective that a more experienced player will possibly prefer the mercenary while a more casual or first time player will prefer to use the more stable option.

For introducing the mercenary hiring mechanic to the player, the best time would be early on when you don't even have four party members yet.

If a robe is the difference between dying and not dying, then I imagine the attacks that the enemies inflict would leave the Wizard + Robe at a few HP, which makes me question the Wizard's durability as a whole.

Remember though, you have to work to get to the chests, and the equipment might end up being similar to the ones you buy in the store.

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<TheGiz> oh hai doggy, oh no that's the straw that broke tjhe came baclsb

I can sell the equipment I don't need, though. The mercenary, not so much.



Agree.



Well, he's a wizard...

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Mega Tact v1.1
Super Penguin Chef
Wizard Blocks

I remembered why I didn't want to write this off to HamsterSpeak immediately! I love the ideas you guys are coming up with.

This would make a great article, though. You should definitely submit it!

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Mega Tact v1.1
Super Penguin Chef
Wizard Blocks

Just wanted to add a bit of weight to Mogri's side.

I have a hard time imagining a scenario where, with a full party, I would willingly choose to spend money on hiring a "mercenary" to displace one of my core characters. If the mercenary is necessary, then there's no choice involved at all. If the mercenary makes the gameplay easier in the shortrun (which seems to be the fundamental idea), he cannot help but take EXP away from a core character who may be important in the long run. The key fact about this is that, as the player, I don't know whether or not the core characters will be needed, but I DO know that the mercenary won't be. So gameplay-wise, if a mercenary is not necessary, he seems to be more trouble than he is worth.

There are other, more subjective reasons as well. The core characters are the ones that the player 'gets to know'. They will, hopefully, be somewhat important to the storyline. Not to mention that they should, again hopefully, be important as characters to the player. The mercenary does not have this, and to boot, he costs money. SCREW THAT.

To play devil's advocate to Mogri's 'good' mercenary scenarios, I don't really see the reason why a core character couldn't be arranged to do the job. Why go through these balancing problems? Why force the player to decide between short-term interest versus long-term team-building stability? This is assuming the player even takes the time to try out the mercenaries, as they are optional.

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I am Srime