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@@switchaccount2308 once you’re on 13k, you need to be able to buff all (eg: heat riser) and debuff all (eg: debilitate) any time you’re not at least at even with her buffs and debuffs or she’ll tear you apart. (If you’re not able to bridge the gap soon enough to do the reflect trick.) You can get these buffs on personas but it’s safest to use sutra items so I’d attempt to have both: save the items for when switching to a persona might be too risky (due to repel/reflect/null resistances). I’ve done this fight with Chi You as my only persona if it’s any indication of how much you can rely on him for this fight. Hop back into the compendium if need be, and get him looking good and you should be able to complete this without needing to do another playthrough :)

@@Plexicraft Yeah, i think i need to remake my personas in the right way and then grind them to 99. No sutra items or incense boosts for me though. Wasted most of them and I'm on 1/31. But thanks for advice and confidence boost.

@@switchaccount2308 You’ve got this, and no worries! If the strat doesn’t work, just let me know and we can bounce some ideas :)

@@nac157 Yeah, that’s a solid way to handle it. Honestly, even I wouldn’t want it to be the only way to play unless they expanded upon the AI to make the trade off worth it. :)

It’s a lot of prep work and some pretty rigid execution, I get what you mean. I enjoyed that it gave me an excuse to get deeper into fusion crafting though :)

@@Plexicraft yeah well I did eventually figure out how to beat here (I just changed my single target with multi target and followed some steps that said to make sure you had max therugy the double damage cup card and syphild aura however the one shot was random so you had to keep retrying till you one shot Ted her luckily I got it on my 2nd to 3rd try and beat her )

@@TheRealMakotoYuki675 Congrats! Enjoy the omnipotent orb :)

@@Plexicraft yeah and I beat the game so can’t wait to bully shadows early game with this 🤣

@@TheRealMakotoYuki675 haha absolutely!

It won’t, the logic is kind of like “that’s 100% a rule break and she’ll full heal before the megido punish once you use it. But having a Persona out that can reflect a type of attack may not rule break since most of the time you’re not 100% sure which type of attack she’ll use… which has her not spend that turn punishing but instead doing a regular turn which gives you just enough time to Armageddon before she can full heal.”

@@Plexicraft ah I see. I can now get to phase 3 fairly consistently so if I die in phase 3 again I may just go find a persona with reflect strike and do this.

@@jonathanodude6660 nice, good luck with the runs. You got this!

Hey, thanks for that :) It really helped me lay things out and give the bones or structure to the project. And yeah, as I was doing some research to see how novel the idea might be, I did come across Tunic. I haven’t played it yet myself but it was exciting to see how information gating has been used more often recently from Toki Tori 2 and La Mulana, to The Witness and Outer Wilds, to Tunic and most recently Animal Well. Tunic looks to be most similar to what I’m trying to do in terms of execution of the delivery of its “information keys” with its discoverable instruction manual pages providing the specific clues, but I haven’t experienced it directly to say for sure. Are you working on a game as well?

@@Plexicraft The Witness, Outer Wilds, Tunic, and Animal well all look like good games tbf. yea, my team and I have graduated uni this year and we're started designing a fast-paced game like ghostrunner, neon white, and ultrakill. the mechanical hook is that you use a spear for combat and navigation; the story hook is that your helping gods restore their lifeforce and power, and you slowly turn into a demi-god yourself; and the art hook is using a polynesian theme. I'm just moving onto prototyping the movement abilities. we've made a game-jam game that we're basing it off - th-cam.com/video/f4UlsBtTcCw/w-d-xo.html

@@longbowman7238 That’s so cool to hear and the game jam game looks tight as well! How big is your team?

@@Plexicraft Thanks for saying! 5 us including myself, plus a handful of people helping here and there

@@longbowman7238 that’s so cool, best of luck to you all :)

Haha thanks, I’m really glad it resonated with you :)

Hey, thanks for digging into the details! Can you point out where you’re getting the quotes from so I can have some more context to address them properly? My intent with this video was never to say that there was a correct way of making a Persona game, but instead to encourage people to challenge their own current thinking on aspects of the series that I feel are often misunderstood or under appreciated. For example, I’d say most fans (new or old) prefer direct control in battle when you compare it to OG Persona 3 and FES’s wonky AI… …but I feel there is some untapped potential there in party AI that could be really exciting to see expanded upon! I don’t think I’m going to convince everyone to accept my perspective on all of these or even most of them, but I think that’s what makes this sort of discussion fun. We all find different aspects of this series fun and I really enjoy having convos like these where someone can show me a facet I haven’t thought of that I can then have more appreciation for or I can do likewise for them :)

Agreed, it’s not the sole decider. Apologies if the way this was edited made it seem that way. I go into more detail in the full video about some of the aspects you brought up :)

@@Plexicraft no worries,I like discussions like these when it comes to bosses,strategies etc. I hope I didn't discourage you or anything. Thx for the tip,I'll make sure to watch it

@@jazzyfool3597 hey not at all, the primary reason I make videos is to have discussions like these. I appreciate it :)

Good question. I don’t think it’s needed. Just bank the theurgies as needed for the breakpoints :)

@@Plexicraft Yea I figured just wasn’t sure if you had that effect in the video thanks!

Yeah, has to be a reflect persona rather than the item. Likely because of the plausible deniability ;)

I agree with everything you’ve said here. Telos is sort of the lightning rod for this discussion since he’s a big extrinsic reward and easy to use as an example but my intent is to highlight that many players will optimize the fun out of the game when given the chance (as the saying goes). While the intent of his inclusion was as a reward for players who love to min max, a side effect is that not only is there a “optimal path” but also a spotlight of encouragement for players to take it. FOMO can kick in and players who don’t know that Elizabeth can be beaten without Telos or are unsure of how easy / difficult the end game is may feel like they’re missing out and playing incorrectly / suboptimally. This is something I’d like to avoid in terms of a design thinking exercise and examining what we might lose and what we might gain by changing things.

I don't know about that. Basically every game has an "optimal way of play". Ive seen lots play the game and never once even boot up a guide. True playing like this means they'll probably need a guide for the Elizabeth fight and not get to beat it, but that fight wasn't made for most to beat anyways, it's just a challenge for those who do like to over optimize there game, it's why it's optional to begin with. If the player cant control themselves to just play a game normally and looks up a guide that basically tells em how to play there game just because they hear about a hard optional fight at that last part of the game, that's a player issue not a game issue

@@thepheeesh Yeah, I see what you mean. Now that I’ve begun to make my own game projects, I’m starting to try and make player issues into my own issues (game issues) so that if I have the responsibility, I’m better set up to fix the it. In this sort of situation it’d be something along the lines of “how do we efficiently protect the players from themselves?” The solution I came up with (no optimal / canon path) is too drastic (everyone misses some content) if the payoff was simply that it’d help with this one issue but the other effects of it (everyone gets to have “their” experience, really sink in and play the game intuitively, hang out with the people they want to get to know more, go deeper into those relationships than simply maxing a social link, that and multiple playthroughs could be quite rewarding) seemed pretty compelling to me. The feasibility part might be a bit too drastic as well but then it’s about figuring out if a core part of Persona’s identity at this point is that it needs to be 100+ hours long. Which is a whole other intricate convo :) Sorry if the structure for this is wonky, off the cuff I find this a bit harder to talk through in a way that makes sense.

@@Plexicraft no problem. Sorry if I came off snarky too. Balance is a very tricky thing to achieve and when developing a game especially, I can be annoying when you want the player to just play it normally only to turn around for 5 seconds then return to the players finding that 1 op way to tackle it and never trying anything else. Makes you sometimes feel powerless as a dev

@@thepheeesh Haha well said! And no problem at all, this short is just an excerpt from a full video and it doesn’t have the full context so I totally understand where you’re coming from :)

I’d agree that an aspect of it is on the player but I’m approaching this from a design standpoint. In the real world we have many constraints like budgets and timeline for example but it’s a fun exercize to think: “What would be optimal design?” Beating the game isn’t the only goal when it comes to playing an RPG especially. Many people enjoy trying to get as much out of it as possible and enjoy many aspects of the content like building up their equipment, items, or compendium. Seeing as much of the story side content as possible and beating the secret uber bosses. What makes this difficult with Persona as a series specially is just how long each game is. The longer they are, the harder it is to justify doing another run. One method I’ve suggested here is to make it so each run could be more unique. It has its benefits and drawbacks but really it’s just an expression of the aspects in these games that I personally prioritize :)

I think it was never intended to max out every social link all in the same playtrough. Possible, but not reasonable. You should pick your fav social links and enjoy the interactions with them, even those bonus interactions where your social links don't progress.

The original Persona 3 had that as the intent but Fes included Telos and every game thereafter has some powerful reward for maxing every SL. It’s a hard puzzle to solve, the pieces of each SL itself are rewarding to take part in and the games are so long it can be hard to chalk it up to “I’ll just see that one next time I have a spare 50 to 100 hours”.

Very good point about 4. It definitely does feel the most laid back :)

I wouldn’t say grinding for hours to finish palaces in one day is a crazy thing, that’s what I did and it wasn’t troublesome at all. Just grinding for quest items gets you at least halfway there. Otherwise yeah I guess, but it made me care so much less about SLs that I didn’t feel motivated doing any of them in the first place, except for fox.

@@MisterIncog i think there shouldn't be a motivation for completing social links besides an intrinsic one like, "I like this person and want to see their story through." One of my biggest issues with P5 was that there were several instances where I really did not like a social link, but I begrudgingly trudged through it anyway just because it gave a good ability. It really sapped a lot of my enjoyment of the game.

Hey thanks for this :) It’s so hard right? How do we experience everything without ruining that experience?

Thanks! I get into a few examples on how things could be tweaked to support a change like this in the long form video. It’s such an interesting combination of systems which make it really fun to think about :)

I’ve thought about this a bit and I’m still not sure where I land with it. Keeping it like this would make the transition from first game to NG+ feel smoother and keep some stakes in terms of “do what you want”. The main thing I want to avoid is some sort of “optimal path” that the player would benefit from googling. Eg: “focus magician, star, and priestess first playthrough and then on NG+ do xyz so you can build a team that can take NG+3 boss” I know I’m overthinking this hypothetical but the main exercise I’m trying to get into is “how do we get more good, keep as much of the good we already have, and cut out what we don’t want”. It’s an interesting puzzle and the closest I’ve come is like you said, just let NG+ handle it. Has so many benefits and only the potential for some drawbacks depending on what the rewards for optimizing are.

@@Plexicraft very true, i was thinking about more of a way to encourage players to take their time, as it would not feel like said progress went up in smoke when starting a new game, since if they do go with the option 6, since it would otherwise be impossible to get all the bonuses in a single run

@@damiansaturday6788 that’s a very good point. The angle I was coming at was “maybe we can decouple the extrinsic rewards from the experience somehow” but I feel we lose quite a bit starting there. Finding ways to help players feel comfortable taking their time sounds much more elegant!

@@Plexicraft thanks

I get what you mean, and actually agree with it and talk through why in the long form video this short has been chopped from. Out of that context, this short may come off a bit more harshly than I intended. In the long form, I state that Elizabeth is an extremely prescriptive encounter and nothing else in the game really prepares you for it. I liken it to how the zodiac spear used to work in the original Final Fantasy 12, no challenge besides “did you read the guide though?” I suggest ways to improve the sign posting for the fight but stand by the fact that I enjoyed piecing together my first team that could beat her without Orpheus Telos. One part do I disagree with is the “extremely narrow set of components” aspect. While Armageddon is missable, it’s pretty much the only part you actually need. Everything else can be subbed out as long as you leave a day to farm what you need then trade it in at the antique store. The fight in the background of this short is my fight against Elizabeth with Chi You as my only Persona. Appreciate the feedback, apologies for the confusion.

I might be a magnet for them then since I wrote a guide on how to beat Elizabeth in P3R and was surprised to see quite a few comments on it stating that: the fight shouldn’t exist and/or people have dropped the game over encountering this fight. It made no sense to me that an optional fight could cause this sort of reaction but here is a link to the guide and its comments: www.reddit.com/r/PERSoNA/comments/1apo97i/how_to_beat_elizabeth_without_orpheus_telos_in_p3r/?rdt=45922

Fuse Shiva, Koumokuten, or Anat to get it early. Messiah and Thanatos also get it once leveled up a bit more and maybe a couple of others do as well, I don't recall.

Yeah, I mean we had like 100 quests prior that could have been used for her to slip in some sort of clue haha

Yeah, her crits can send you all the way back to the beginning so randomly :/

She's a pretty easy fight when u keep track of your trial and errors

@@michaelbartlett7716 I’d say phase 2 is the main issue… that and being able to fight her even if you don’t have Armageddon is a bit cruel haha

​​@@Plexicraftjust skip phase 2, get her down to like 9000 hp, then on turn she swaps to Thor you swap to a repel strike and use a debuff defense, then use armageddon

@@michaelbartlett7716 Clever ;) th-cam.com/video/v8hlu3IayW0/w-d-xo.htmlsi=RBGju1NNhIGa1YBn

Yeah @eh3744 had a similar take on this. It's so cool to see that others would be interested in the potential for more of the intrinsic benefit of the way the characters could be in a better place rather than just the extrinsic "Gimme those rank rank points". I agree, making social links have multiple paths and different definitions of success would help a ton in terms of immersion and replayability.

Hey thanks a lot! I really appreciate your perspective and the way you approached tweaking these. 1 sounds like a great compromise that stays true to my overall goal of imagining things more interconnected and immersive. Your take on 3 gels quite well with 6 also. Really neat ideas. I love the concept of choosing between “smash and grab that power” or “take the time to earn them”. It’s similar to the little sister choice from Bioshock but framed more intricately and would likely be more robust due to the social link improving through out the play through and being a consistent reward. I’m always more interested in worlds you can affect and experience the consequences of those effects during the playthrough as opposed to games where you’re sort of filling out a Madlib for the ending that says “x is king now, y has gone into hiding, etc.”

Absolutely, this quote is a bit out of context but in the full video my point is that this quality is part of a list of qualities that made Persona 3 feel unique to me on release. One being what’s stated in this short, another being that the party battle AI (not allowing for direct control) made it feel like I was experiencing the game via the eyes of the protagonist and not from a more omniscient perspective I was used to in other JRPGs where I controlled all of the party members while in battle. :)

I really enjoyed it. It was a nice surprise when I initially played it and found out "Oh okay, they're do what they think is right outside and inside the dungeon." Made it feel like I was really experiencing the game through the MC's eyes and not some puppeteer perspective.

Very true. I feel like it wouldn’t be that difficult to make the conversations more dynamic with a prefacing comment then have them launch into whatever text they were going say regardless.

Hey thanks for going into detail on all these. 1 makes sense to me seeing as what immerses you is different. It’s such a subjective thing right? As for 3, I think “being a yes man” is a criticism P3 receives more often than others in the series and while you’re right, that other games do need you to kind of nod along with other SLs in 4 and 5. I feel as we moved away from 3 it became more about choosing the “Paragon” answer and less about making an intuitive and pragmatic decision. And that’s a good note on 4; I wouldn’t mind if we get a character like Aigis but I’m just hoping whoever it is acts more like her than they do like Teddie. He was just very distracting to me. 5 and 6, definitely. Do you have a fav Persona game?

I could talk for wayyy too long (and I did in the full video haha) about how much I love the AI controlled party mechanic and how they could really lean into making the characters show their personalities in battle, have your social link level affect behavior, have the plot affect behavior. OG P3 and P3Fes just have this awesome immersive feeling of staying up late to beat up shadows with my buds :D Even if Mitsuru blows all her SP on status effects that rarely work…

I feel ya, I honestly missed fatigue as a system and I feel like the only one haha I feel like Reload filled in the night time with some nice stuff like the link stories but it definitely did still drag a bit.

Same :)

Unfortunately, maxing the Star social link is required to get access to the Fusion Spell Armageddon. So while the blade isn’t necessary, having Helel to make the fusion spell the bigger loss here. I’ve seen people beat her without Armageddon but they do have the Lucifer blade when doing so. Not sure how much of a difference it makes but could be worth trying to emulate a non Armageddon fight where you don’t necessarily rush the 2nd phase like you do here, you rush the “4th phase” that I essentially skip with Armageddon. Edit: I’m dumb and can’t reading comprehend. You should be fine without the blade :)

@@Plexicraft thanks! I was stressing so hard to get Armageddon because I only had a file saved back to the 15th and I had just enough time to max him out but was a little saddened when I couldn’t get the blade lol. I may need to level my personas some more because my trickster does nowhere near that amount of damage on her right now.

@@koopakoop1264 hahaha what a buzzer beater! Using Armageddon to farm the reaper and using Elizabeth to heal on the last day should get your chosen team nice and high level. You got this!

@@Plexicraft hey me again lol, I’m a little confused as to how your skadi did over 4,000 damage. My stats are very similar and I have all the same skills on her plus I used diamond dust during the surt turn with her defense down,y attack up and concentrate but I only did just under 2,000 so she had like 31 hp after my Armageddon

@@koopakoop1264 Ahhh that’s brutal. Sorry to hear it. To answer your question, a few things might be going on: I’m playing on normal difficulty which means any damage done in hard or merciless will be lower (outside of the god hand she’ll do to herself, that will actually be higher funnily enough). Also, I only use Skaadi when I know she has debuffed defense and I have buffed attack and I have concentrate. If any of those 3 things haven’t lined up, I reset the round and let her go through her cycle to ensure I can do as much damage as possible to bridge the gap. My Skaadi also has pretty much every damage passive possible (amp, boost, single target boost) which will add up. Not sure what other factors I may be missing but those should be the significant ones.

Yeah, fatigue in particular is such an interesting system (and quite a thematic one for P3) that I wish they’d look to improve it rather than completely get rid of it. In the full video, I get into how it could be made more into a positive reinforcement based mechanic rather than a negative reinforcement one. Anything to take all the pressure off of SP being the only thing that determines when you leave a dungeon so you have more interesting decisions to make :)

Nice team! It’s really rewarding to beat her without Orpheus Telos. I managed to do it with Chi You as my only persona (which is why I’m using buff items). Here’s the full fight if you’re interested: th-cam.com/video/3FFUd28_BkQ/w-d-xo.htmlsi=XzkiGrVshMugoSMK I still believe her design is quite punishing and 10 times harder without Orpheus Telos though. My main issue is that there’s so little warning about the type of fight she is that new players can easily miss out on personas or gear that will make the fight much easier but won’t know they’ve missed them until they’re way past that point. I still love the uber boss fights though which is why I’m hoping for many more in Persona 6 :D

Really appreciate you going into detail regarding your reasoning. Makes it very clear where you’re coming from and I totally get each perspective. I get what you mean about things being unpredictable in your party being a turn off. My pipe dream version would be that they would seem unpredictable but be decently easy to intuit so you could plan around their archetypes / behaviors / “personas” but have enough surprise to make hype filled moments. Definitely a refreshing take on 4. I just would prefer someone like Aigis over someone like Teddie to fill that role. Would definitely love to see some SMT style uber bosses in Persona! Nocturne is such a vibe :)

@@Plexicraft Hey man, you do you! I've been thinking about the 2nd suggestion, and after though yeah that is actually a pretty good suggestion! Often times in P5/P4G people speedrun the palace to do the s.l. which leads to some weird yet funny moments like futaba sleeping through out summer. Adding fatigue back makes sense and adds more depth to the gameplay. About #5 I often make jokes with some friends who are also into persona but not so much SMT about how " They should make a Persona but with the Press Turn System to make Persona Perfect" Luckily Metaphor Refantazio looks to be an idea that came to reality and I am soooo hyped!!

I think it might be a difficulty thing in retrospect, I am on merciless

@@Vidzaes You hit the nail on the head. I’m on Normal. Merciless is much harder and will rely more on your use of a nuker like Skadi to get those bigger numbers. But on the other hand (lol), Elizabeth’s God Hand in phase 2 can do about 500 more damage to herself on Merciless so when you reflect, you won’t need to bridge as much of the gap beforehand.

I get what you mean and I wouldn’t want to have zero party control if the AI changes I mentioned weren’t included with it. I know most people wouldn’t want to only control the MC even with those changes but I guess that’s what gets it included in this video haha How did you feel about the other 5 and their reasoning?

I missed out on OT so I had to get creative!

@@Plexicraft the funny thing is I didn’t debuff Elizabeth during the 3rd phase cause I thought that would be breaking a rule

@@ChaseBird1 What was your Orpheus Telos build?

Love your way of explaining your perspective for the first one. That’s essentially the experience I want with the battle system. I actually haven’t done the challenge battles in 5 since I played 5 when it came out and only recently picked up Royal. I might be mistaken but I think they’re exclusive to Royal. Either way, I’m looking forward to them! And yeah I’d love to turn off the part of my mind that screams “Make sure you don’t miss the ‘True Ending’!” it definitely pulls me out of the experience sometimes. What would you say is your fav Persona game of those you’ve played?

@@Plexicraft Persona 3 for sure. Honestly I just picked Royal myself so it may be just a Royal feature. 😅

@@designconker4796 Haha I’m still chasing that feeling from the first time I played P3! I have high hopes for 6 but I’m actually really interested in Metaphor: ReFantazio since I have a feeling that might be where they really get to get weird and experimental with design again. I’m not saying that I expect 6 to be nothing but more polish but they do have a good thing going and they know it.

Hey, thanks so much for the kind feedback :D I totally agree that party members should be able to revive you! I feel that if they can move from Persona 3 FES to Persona 3 Portable and change the way the attack all or "Ma-skills" will still trigger a One More Turn when you hit a weakness but also hit an enemy who isn't weak to that "Ma-Skill" the can absolutely get away with changing it so your party can revive you. I think you're dead on about people doubting the AI being able to get to where it needs to be to make party AI actually feel immersive. I'd just love to see them try to knock it out of the park though :D and you reminded me: I didn't add it in this video but, I'd love for the romances to unlock bonus ranks in a social link because as it is currently implemented, the optimal way to progress is to just shelve a confidant once they're maxed and that's not at all how relationships (especially romantic ones) work! Having additional ranks would make it so players would be encouraged by the game mechanics to use their time with the person they're dating rather than get them to max and automatically default to looking to move others towards max rank. There's so many possibilities for mechanics to intertwine I feel like I could talk about it all day haha

Haha I missed out on getting Orpheus Telos so I was like “I’m not gonna let that stop be from beating her with just one persona”!

Haha I know! Little stray catching strays :/

Absolutely, my wish for number 1 may be a pipe dream due to how difficult it could be to balance difficulty wise while still feeling immersive and engaging but I tried to give it the out of “at least they wouldn’t have to balance for direct control if we made this the only way”. Which is… kinda drastic haha But yeah, like you mentioned, I love the concept of characters personalities showing up in battle. Others have mentioned some cool suggestions that are less drastic and more elegant so I’m optimistic about what we’ll see from P6 :D

@@PlexicraftI think I’ll make a full comment about it when I get a minute, but I think to execute your number 1 correctly, there would need a huge overhaul on how the ai and speed stat work for it to work, which I think is sadly a pipe dream for an already established game with an established system. The speed stat change mostly to say that instead of whoever is fastest goes first, it would work better if you assigned certain characters certain priority so they can act accordingly. It’s the way I’ve been playing persona 3 reload, using the stat cards for agility to chose who goes first. I made Yukari the fastest, so she can top the party up if need be, or lower the enemies accuracy from the get go. Then I made sure that Mitsuru was the second fastest, so she can lower the defense of every enemy or get an sp drain in if the the defense drop wasn’t needed. After that, for my team anyway, it dosen’t matter who goes next, but I make sure their speed is lower than Mitsuru’s. I also have an invigorate band on both Mitsuru and Yukari since their sp cost is frontloaded every battle. If the game were balanced around not chosing what the teammates do, after the depth of strategy that can go into controlling them, the system would either have to be very fleshed out, or you still have some level of control wether it be before the fight or during. Another problem arises when ailments come into play. Since often times, ailments are applied to the team as the battle is about to be won, but with no control of your teamates, ailments become kinda redundant. Say the ailments are applied when the enemy is one hit away from death, and your healer didn’t get ailed. When in control, you would kill the enemy, fight done. When not in control, your healer would either have to prioritize healing the ailments, costing you sp, or prioritize fighting, which would be a double edged sword for when you actually do need the ailments to go away (if they were applied near the beginning of the fight). Other than making the ai a lot smarter, if you the player can tell them to prioritize one or the other, it means that they can’t really act dynamically. Imagine another scenario where the fight is midway through, and the ailment isint really severe. If the ai is more aligned to cure ailments, it’ll just get rid of it. It might as well of not happened. As if the enemy wasted their turn, to waste your healers turn. So instead you just get free damage. I don’t claim to say that ai won’t ever be at the point were it can make good calls. I’m certainly not expecting an ai that perfectly acts as I want it to, I just think it’s not super conceivable to think an ai could get a system that feels like the character truly has free will without feeling like every battle is an rng fest. And that’s not something you want in a game, as a dev or player. If it’s a game of luck, sure go ahead. But in a game of skill, when luck is what chooses what 3/4th’s of your team does, it’s a bit too much.

@@Vidzaes yeah I should be clear, I don’t anticipate any of these “features” actually being in Persona 6 (maybe #5 would Idk). They are all sort of pipe dreams. P Studio knows they have gold so they would be wise to iterate upon it rather than toss it out looking for another precious metal. But if I think through a bit of what you’re talking about (really appreciate the detail you went into btw) there’s two points I’d push back on and that’s that making the party AI controlled would be an RNG fest and that to make the party members convincingly smart enough would be quite difficult. To the first point, I think this is somewhat on a gradient, while there is already some rng in battle (cries, misses, who gets attacked and is weak, trying to suss out what an enemy is weak to) I believe that if party AI is done well enough it can not only work to feel immersive also but still feel strategically satisfying. How that works out leads directly to the second point. Making party AI smart enough. My limited understanding of most character AI (typically enemy AI) is that the most difficult part isn’t making them challenging or competent but instead making them “dumb” enough to not feel unfair or robotic. In the situation you listed where a healer dodges an ailment and can end the fight, whatever info you know (the healers attack strength, likelihood to hit, and the enemy’s remaining hp, etc.) would also be known by the game or the party AI and should be able to execute on the smartest plan. Another way to look at the first point is that while Persona has established in 4, 5, p3p and reload as a strategic turn based battle system, OG P3 and Fes aren’t necessarily RNG fests in my mind as much as they are trying to emulate a “single player co op” game. There are choices you can make to have some more control like if Junpei just lost Chidori and is only swinging for the fences you might be in a position to bench him or lean into his rage. If Yukari is feeling like she can’t focus based on learning new info about her family you can swap in Ken to have someone more reliable or keep her in so she can grow more confident in herself. I don’t mean to scope creep everything here but these sorts of systems can range from very basic to something much more immersive depending on how far the design moves along a gradient.

@@Plexicraft I understand the point you’re making, and now also understand what you mean by making them “dumb” enough. They have all the information available. I think my perfect version of a system you’re describing wouldn’t really work in a persona setting. I don’t really like relinquishing all control of my party members. Instead of having them emotionally driven like your example, where they mostly do one action (Like Junpei going in guns blazing when he lost Chidori) I think seeing characteristics from the characters be improved through story moments (a little like how spending time cooking, farming, reading, etc. with p3 peeps gives them buffs) but have it be meaningful characteristics. For example, Junpei can’t bare to lose anyone else after losing Chidori, so if anyone in the team were to take heavy damage, have him get a reactionary action were he will, out of turn order, hit the enemy, inflicting distress on them or something. I’m yet to make a game, and this is just a crude example, so it might not be balanced. To loop back the relinquishing control, I really would like to see a system do it well. But the allies need to have either much simplified kits and the game balanced around it (one character can only heal, not attack. Another can only buff, another can only debuff, etc) so the control you have becomes “who do I bring for this fight” and not “who’s less likely to do something that waste a turn” . I see this system working better in a real time combat fight rather than a turn base one, where you actually don’t want to be controlling your companions as you need to focus on you. All in all, the main point I want to make, is I don’t want control to be completely out of my hands. Either lowering the things allies can do, making them more reactionary than just waiting for their turn, or other. I don’t claim to know how to retain control while keeping the allies act freely within their character. I just know that if I had to chose one or the other, I would prefer complete control over immersion during combat.

@@Vidzaes I totally respect your opinion on it and I really enjoyed your solution of an out of order reactionary turn. That’s quite an elegant solution to bridge the gap between direct control and surprising anime hype moments. I agree with a system that is positive reinforcement leaning to help determine who to bring but I’m not sure if it would need to be limited as much as your example but I can see how the balance is being taken into account there. Real time combat like Tales of or Star Ocean is definitely where a system like this would work best and I too would not want to give up my favorite turn based battle mechanics just to have it work in such a way so I may be trying to force a square peg into a round hole. FF12 with its gambits are the closest analogue I can come up with to describe a version of my pipe dream AI. I just remember playing FES and being like “oh wow, there is so much potential here despite everyone hating this” haha Either way, it’s been fun riffing on the game design aspects. I’m very new to game design so I’m trying to explore and experiment as much as I can and it’s always nice to bounce ideas :)

Haha ya got me. Did any of the 6 stand out to you in particular?

I don’t think he’s all bad, I prefer Morgana to him (and Aigis to Morgana) but I was interested him his story during 4. I just didn’t enjoy the his type of humor very much but my partner absolutely loved it haha

Hey fair enough, people like different things. My partner loves Teddie but he just didn’t connect with me like he does for some. :) I likely went a bit too hard on him but I just find mascots distracting for the reasons I went over. Is Teddie you favorite character in 4? I really loved Dojima.

I’m listening… ;)

Hey fair enough, my wish for it relies on the AI at least being as seemingly smart as the actual characters which may be a pipe dream. I like the tweaks you’re talking about though. Especially love the idea of party members making a suggestion, could be the perfect middle ground especially since it’s turn based.

@@PlexicraftIt would be fine to include if they did it the way they did in p3, with the option for direct command for people who don’t like it. They still had the option for it in p4, but it was half assed and the ai weren’t nearly as smart so it was never useful

@@AmeButCoolI don’t really want to take away anyone’s ability to choose, in a perfect world: I’d prefer it be an option but not the default one so that players can experience the party AI making moves the characters would and the difficulty was perfectly tuned so that there was no benefit selecting one or the other in a lower stakes early scenario. Then they could decide if they wanted full control. Since this is pretty much impossible without making the party AI mode potentially feel like “training wheels mode” to some and “RNG fest” to others, I went pretty drastic with my wish for it to be the only mode to remove the burden of choice from the player. That has its own flaws where some would still prefer to have the choice rather than curation. It’s a tough one but I enjoy the discussion it allows us fans to have about it :)

Yeah, honestly I don’t think any of these will be in Persona 6 (they’re just sort of my kooky wishlist) but hopefully we will continue have social links with all of our party members :) Is there anything you’re hoping to see feature wise in Persona 6?

@@PlexicraftI liked persona 2 fusion spells

@@MaddRoxYu Oh nice choice! I’d love to see party members combine forces for spells like that again :D

@@Plexicrafti liked the innate persona traits from persona 5 royal, it made each persona feel just a bit more unique, more so than unique skills did, and has another layer of customisation that I liked

@@damiansaturday6788 Yeah little details in being able to have a bit more customization really help!