Problem/Issue – Not every character is ideal/balanced in straight-up non-powered PvP. Not only are some characters glaringly better than others in the same #* category (and I’m not even talking about Bag-Man compared to his 2* brethren, that’s an obvious thing), but the computer doesn’t play with characters correctly. It has the same logic no matter who it’s playing for, making it easy for others to abuse.
Suggestion – Allow the players to devise a Defensive Strategy assigned to each character. If there are no strategies assigned to a character, then nothing is changed. These strategies only take place when the computer is running your team on defense, not when you (the player) are playing against another team (the defender).
The strategies should be moldable and multiple per character. Each character has (usually) 3 abilities, and yes, I’m including passives. That’s 9 powers per team (again, usually). The player might have played that team because of a certain strategy when using abilities A, D, and F, in the same turn, or in a certain order, or both… but the computer will never do that with it’s current logic.
So, how does it work? Here’s the idea. Set logic ‘if/then’ statements that the players can fill in the blanks for. For example, for X23, you might say ‘only use Holding Back (green ability) if Red AP is equal or greater than 9’. This way, Holding Back is never used until the Red AP count makes it worth it. You might program Medusa with a logic statement saying ‘if no enemy strike/attack/defense tiles exist, do not use Hair Meddle’.
Basically, to make it user friendly, you make it a set of lines with drop down menus filled with options.
IF
–menu containing each color of AP, Health, each type of tile on the board, other options(?)–,
–menu containing trigger phrases like “is greater than, less than, equal to, contains, etc”–,
THEN
–menu containing the options “use, and, do not use”–
–menu containing each of that character’s powers, other options(?)–.
Then, when you’ve assembled your team of 3 characters, the game combines the list of defensive stratagems together into a master list for that team when played on the defense. The opponent is not allowed to see this list at all. If two or more commands overlap (like, waiting for 9 Red AP for this, but then waiting on 12 Red AP for this), then the command with the greater numerical value takes precedence, overruling the lower numerical value.
If you’ve played Final Fantasy 12 before, think of the ‘gambits’ you could program into each character, but then reorganize them for this game’s logic.
This would allow more characters to be viable in versus play, because quite frankly, the only thing holding back a lot of characters is how the computer plays them. No one wants to play certain characters in PvP because we all know that the computer doesn’t play them correctly.
This would be an extra menu item within each character in the Roster, so that you can set each character individually at your own leisure, and of course, the player doesn’t have to set up anything if they don’t want to. The logic of the game remains the same as it is now, and only adds these IF/THEN statements (or ‘Defensive Stratagems’) into play if the player has assigned any to any/all of the characters in the team.
Of course, I’m not sure how viable all of this is, but I know game balance is an issue, and sometimes it’s not that the character is bad… it’s just the game doesn’t play that character correctly, and other characters play right into the computer’s logic very easily.