Playing as the other students

[Deirdre Skye]

It would be nice to be able to play as the other students in Academagia, perhaps as an alternate game mode.

 

You would get their special action, but would also have more specific goals which you need to achieve to pass the year (in additional to passing the classes).

Your student-specific adventure would change, telling the story from your point of view. Finishing it would be one of the requirements to pass the year.

 

This would add a lot of replayability, and would greatly increase role-playing value. It would make the characters come to life more if the player can experience the world from their point of view.

 

Perhaps there could even be an achievement, for each year, for each character, if you succeed, so you can keep track of which students you haven't tried yet.

[Legate of Mineta]

Deirdre;

 

It would be a cool touch, but a good amount more writing. I don't think it's something we could tackle in Y2, but it's a great idea.

[Deirdre Skye]

I might be oversimplifying things, but couldn't this, in its basic form, just be a mod?

 

- There would be a mod for each student, which you check at game start. (they should be mutually exclusive).

- Since the player plays that character, character generation is skipped. The AI version of the character is removed from the game.

- The original personal adventure is removed, and a new personal adventure is added. (some writing required here, but I'm sure it wouldn't be too hard, the stories already exist, just need to be modified so the student himself is the one solving it.)

- New goals are added. At end of year, the goals are checked. (This part may be the most code-change intensive)

(It would be great if you had some sort of 'quest' page, where you can keep track of your progress, but if that's too much work, the characters could just have their goals written down on parchment in their inventory, much like the tutorial scrolls.)

 

Edit:

 

It just occurred to me that all adventures which have that student in them (not just the student-specific adventure) would also need

- to be slightly rewritten (using another student, perhaps, as a quick fix)

or

- to be heavily rewritten (to make it from their point of view, lotsa work, but would be great)

or

- to be removed (so it never happened, least work).

[Legate of Mineta]

Deirdre;

 

It certainly could be, but it will need a good amount of work.

 

The Events, too, would need to be revised.

[Svinik]

The amount of work depends a lot on the student, Philippe and Joana turn up a lot for example, and removing either of them would have a significant impact on the dynamics of the year if the player played them differently.

 

I don't know what the distribution curve is of the other students, but the more "interesting" ones to play would almost certainly be the ones in the most random events and adventues I suspect - making them the hardest to mod.

[CremePudding]

This sounds like a really fun concept, but a lot of student won't really work with this or requires special game mechanics. There's a werewolf student, there's a half-fey student, there's Catherine Chard with her and her nose being located so far above the social ladder that she doesn't really talk to other student, there's Zoe who get KOed by a sneeze (sightly easier to deal with), the "Main Quest Triplets" would need a Main Quest rewrite and the

[Leoshi]

Creme your posts are ending weirdly! Carry on.

 

So about playing as other students. It is possible and might be fun (Force Ana to Chase Philippe after while playing as Cyrus). The one requirement is a dedicated team to do all the adjustments needed but they are currently busy with Holdfast.

 

Maybe this idea would come true in the future games!

[Legate of Mineta]

It *is* a neat idea, but I don't think they're planning anything with this kind of scope. Still, very cool idea.

[Schwarzbart]

I suggested to allow player chars to be imported as NPCs some time ago.

Together with this it sounds like a great challenge for people who want to start from a weak position.

[Albert]

Cool idea, but I can understand how it would be a challenge for the writers and developers since each student would need a story almost as masive as the main player character.

 

Also, you can't have the same events for all these different students. Philipe wouldn't reason the same was a D'alfi or Catherin or any of the others.

The filler text woudl have to be custom tailored for each student to be in character.

It's hard enough to make it be in character for the one playerstudent the players generated who can be very different depending on skills and background aswell as academic sucess and who their friends are.

 

EDIT: still eagerly awaiting year 2

 

And, yeah, I would have tried palying as those other students if it had been possible and a feature, but I can understand why it isn't.

As long as we get great adventures, events and flavor text that's somewhat fitting our different player generated characters, it will be enough for me

[CremePudding]

Maybe a spin off where you can experience the summer in a few students' shoes which carryover some variation to the main Year? Still kinda impractical but it sounds a lot more doable.

 

Or collaborative adventures where some steps rolls against other students' stats instead of your own, like a familiar adventure except jumping between several characters.

 

Although personally, I am a little against playing as other students for a whole year. The mod tools and the game would probably run like a snail with that many things.

[Legate of Mineta]

CP;

 

All very cool ideas, but the consensus seems to be there's enough for us to do for just for the Player, let alone the other Students. Maybe in the future, though, we'll see.

[Dreamweaver]

I think the prospect of making a rewrite of practically every event/adventure for each possible character sounds incredibly time-consuming and next to impossible in practice. Would be cool if it was there, but pretty impractical and if that much time was being invested in improving variance in adventure/events I'd be MUCH happier with being giving more choices instead and then role-playing my decisions to fit the character I was playing.

[Albert]

I think the current system of having a player character itneracting with the world, adventures and other characters is enough. Rather have that mechanic improved upon and expanded

 

Better to do something good than doing everything half good or worse.

 

After all, we got another 4 school years ahead of us.

 

After that... Maybe a post school adventure?

[Legate of Mineta]

Maybe.

[Deirdre Skye]

It would also be nice if the adventures were animated. Perhaps using software like RPG Maker. (with which I made this mock-up)

It would basically be scripted and animated, interrupted by the dialogue options of the player.

I'm unsure how information would be transferred between academagia's main software and the RPG Maker-based adventure module, though.

 

[Schwarzbart]

I personal prefer to have it as plain text as this is one thing that makes Academagia special amough all the other games.

If they add RPG Maker the value of the game for me immediatly would drop from $25 (or maybe even more) to $5 or less.

[Legate of Mineta]

Personally, I would like to see more hands-on animation myself, but it's veerrrrrry unlikely. The costs to do that, and to preserve the imagination and possibility of the text would be...prohibitive.

 

Not a bad idea, though!

[Deirdre Skye]

Well, maybe it could be a fan-made spin-off

 

I would like it if the pictures of the relevant students / professors were used in adventures/events and such, though.

It's easier to remember who's who when you have a visual representation, and without having to press links to get to that information.

(In other words, forget all the other rpgmaker stuff in my screenshot, except for the text bubble with the picture.)

[CremePudding]

Extended Epilogue: Ringraeyer, the winner of the Project Runway Elumian Edition?

[goliath764]

I personal prefer to have it as plain text as this is one thing that makes Academagia special amough all the other games.

If they add RPG Maker the value of the game for me immediatly would drop from $25 (or maybe even more) to $5 or less.

 

Nothing beats the ultimate graphic engine that is imagination...and some picture aids.

[Legate of Mineta]

Hear, hear.