Relationships with party members feel mechanically underutilized

[Aetius]

Relationships between party members (Friendships, romance, rivalries, to name some examples) have minimal to no impact on gameplay for party-based RPGs and some tactical games, even for "Story matters" type of companies. This is a shame.

I mean more than the typical "X is a good friend with Y, Agility gets a bonus".

Let's say Y, good friends with X, sees X fall in combat. I imagine that the player could lose control of Y that tries to either take revenge attacking the downer or go heal the fallen X. If the death is permanent, Y gets a permanent debuff.

Adding something like this, I think, would add an element of risk to actually form relationships with party members. Less "I will lose content if I don't interact" more "This could have a negative impact in combat and could result in a game over", which would validate more the idea of creating a "hirelings" party that are all professionals with no attachments.

An example of a "reward" for the relationship could be something similar to Legolas/Gimli from the LotR films. Legolas kills 2-3 enemies in his turn. Gimli gets a small boost to damage in his turn because of "competition".

I am wondering if this could work or if it would affect the freedom of the player too much.

 

[just]

you start drinking with your male companion, share funny stories about whores, you both become alcoholics in chapter 2, abandon main quest till one of you die from liver failure mid chapter 4(guy with lower constitution)

 

[Iucounu]

Mass Effect 2 has a nice catfight between two of the female members, and if you can't resolve it without chosing side one of them loses her loyalty perks to you. But bringing both in the same mission doesn't affect their performance further.

Adding something like this, I think, would add an element of risk to actually form relationships with party members. Less "I will lose content if I don't interact" more "This could have a negative impact in combat and could result in a game over", which would validate more the idea of creating a "hirelings" party that are all professionals with no attachments.

I suppose the player could choose stable but average professionals; or attempt to gain synergy effects by combining party members with personal attachments, but at the risk of catastrophic failure.

 

[ColonelMace]

Having mechanical modifiers during fights sounds gimmicky.
It'd either be negligeable and you wouldn't care, or impactful and suddenly you're micromanaging relationships to trigger bonuses and whatnot.

I don't think that'd be interesting...

 

[Baron Tahn]

Its the wrong direction anyway. I'm not looking to play a social sim and romance is tacked on at the best of times.

What I would like to see is just lots of decent banter that shows character. Back when they did alignment this was well demonstrated with stuff like BG2 when the party would argue. Its okay sometimes in Dragon Age etc. It would have been cool to see in Might & Magic with your created party members.

When its overshadowed by everyone getting x side quest that makes them 'loyal' or some badly written romance it just sucks. Better when the adventurers are different people that come together to complete a goal and show their different views on that, rather than everything revolving around the main PC and picking the right dialogue options for 'more content'. Just my opinion, but there are good examples, just seems to ALWAYS be terrible now.

 

[Tyranicon]

First devs have to make you care about the characters in the first place.

Do I really care about generic elf wizard trope and their relationship with generic human fighter?

I'd be pissed if I have to micro relationships when it's something I don't care about.

 

[Aetius]

and romance is tacked on at the best of times.

That was exactly why I was thinking that this could work as a way to engrain it into the game itself. Give it more purpose and effect on the gameplay rather than "okay, we banged. Let's wait 40 hours until the final mission to see new content!". It feels shallow and outside of the gameplay loop. I like the idea of relationships and romance in RPGs, but I feel they are undercooked, that there is more that could be done to make them less unnatural.

Not much to add about the bantering, you are right there, the art of good banters that flesh out the companions seems to have been lost.

Do I really care about generic elf wizard trope and their relationship with generic human fighter?

I'd be pissed if I have to micro relationships when it's something I don't care about.

The way I see it is applies more to the PC's relationship with the companions, I think, rather than companions having relationships between each other. And even then, in my dream scenario, the player would be the one initiating the friendship/romance, so it's the player's choice to interact with the mechanic and its risks.

To give an example, in Dragon Age:Origins, you are told that, eventually, you will have to pick between your LI and your duty, and it never happens. I think that romances (or friendships, but there are very little good friendship paths to the point where it's an annoyance) should have an actual downside in order to make it feel more natural and less "checkboxy" if that makes sense.

 

[Drowed]

Honestly, you answered your own question in your examples. Either you end up with superficial bonuses that are generically applicable to the point of being little more than a gimmick, or they end up being too specific and circumstantial that few players would see those events having any meaningful role in practice. And even when they do, they could be a huge headache to balance and you would get a lot of butthurt players raging that they lost the battle because of some "random bullshit".

Essentially, it's a big investment of time in a feature that has relatively little actual impact on gameplay and that takes a fair amount of effort to implement in an interesting way. The effort doesn't outweigh the gain, so you either end up leaving it at a superficial level, or maybe it's something you could build your entire game around - and I don't think anyone has figured out how to make that second scenario work yet. And all of this is assuming that you could even come up with a group of characters interesting enough to justify all that effort in the first place.

 

[deuxhero]

IIRC, JA2's morale system had some element where certain mercs would be competitive with some mercs they disliked but didn't hate, meaning their morale would lower quicker when idle because they disliked their companion but in-battle it made their morale changes more volatile (so upstaging their rival is better than mere success, while failing with their rival present is all the more demoralizing). Never really played with antagonistic mercs to know for sure.

 

[PorkyThePaladin]

Relationships in RPGs are a terrible idea that cannot be fixed. Just like companions in the first place. RPGs ought to be played alone, as the strong silent loner type. John Wayne and Clint Eastwood didn't bring 5 other idiots with them everywhere they went. Neither did Bruce Lee or Chuck Norris. Nor did Aragorn, Arathorn, Ned Stark, Tywin Lannister, Tyrone the Bull, Freddy Kruger, or Drizzt.

Do you know who goes everywhere with a backup of 5 other people?

Enough said...

 

[deuxhero]

did Aragorn [...] or Drizzt [didn't bring 5 other idiots with them everywhere they went?]

What?!

 

[NaturallyCarnivorousSheep]

Only allow custom companions with dialogue.

 

[Bastardchops]

Relationships in RPGs are a terrible idea that cannot be fixed. Just like companions in the first place. RPGs ought to be played alone, as the strong silent loner type. John Wayne and Clint Eastwood didn't bring 5 other idiots with them everywhere they went. Neither did Bruce Lee or Chuck Norris. Nor did Aragorn, Arathorn, Ned Stark, Tywin Lannister, Tyrone the Bull, Freddy Kruger, or Drizzt.

Do you know who goes everywhere with a backup of 5 other people?

Enough said...

 

[mediocrepoet]

Relationships in RPGs are a terrible idea that cannot be fixed. Just like companions in the first place. RPGs ought to be played alone, as the strong silent loner type. John Wayne and Clint Eastwood didn't bring 5 other idiots with them everywhere they went. Neither did Bruce Lee or Chuck Norris. Nor did Aragorn, Arathorn, Ned Stark, Tywin Lannister, Tyrone the Bull, Freddy Kruger, or Drizzt.

Do you know who goes everywhere with a backup of 5 other people?

Enough said...

Are there any answers that aren't completely gay?

 

[PorkyThePaladin]

Nope, and that's why companions/relationships are a bad idea.

Do you know what's a good idea on how to implement other close people or romance into the game? Make them NPCs or NPCs that occasionally accompany you. That's totally fine, you visit them sometimes, boink them, talk to them, whatever, and then you continue on your way as the lone wanderer.

Deionarra in PST, your wife in Days Gone, the devil chick in your favorite game (Dark Memesiah of Kick and Magic), your wife in Metro Exodus, Yennifer/Triss/Chani in Witcha games... Those are great examples of well done romances/companions. You got your love and feelinz, but they don't follow you around like dogs and get in the way, and you don't have to make progress with them or other stupid shit.

 

[Nortar]

Relationships between party members (Friendships, romance, rivalries, to name some examples) have minimal to no impact on gameplay for party-based RPGs and some tactical games, even for "Story matters" type of companies. This is a shame.

I mean more than the typical "X is a good friend with Y, Agility gets a bonus".

Let's say Y, good friends with X, sees X fall in combat. I imagine that the player could lose control of Y that tries to either take revenge attacking the downer or go heal the fallen X. If the death is permanent, Y gets a permanent debuff.

Adding something like this, I think, would add an element of risk to actually form relationships with party members. Less "I will lose content if I don't interact" more "This could have a negative impact in combat and could result in a game over", which would validate more the idea of creating a "hirelings" party that are all professionals with no attachments.

An example of a "reward" for the relationship could be something similar to Legolas/Gimli from the LotR films. Legolas kills 2-3 enemies in his turn. Gimli gets a small boost to damage in his turn because of "competition".

I am wondering if this could work or if it would affect the freedom of the player too much.

I'm pretty sure that JA2 and JA3 have the closest implementaion of what you're describing.
Some mercs joining or refusing to join (or asking for more payments) depending on who you have in your team, or on your performance in battle.
Some may leave if they don't get enough action.
And iirc some characters can go berserk when their friends/lovers get killed in combat.

 

[behold_a_man]

RPGs ought to be played alone, as the strong silent loner type. John Wayne and Clint Eastwood didn't bring 5 other idiots with them everywhere they went.

Did they ever need to lockpick a chest? Heal some guy in the wilderness? Cast a fireball or two here and there? Behead some infidels?
Why should RPG protagonists avoid the division of labour without necessity?

 

[PorkyThePaladin]

This whole specialization and division of labor is an obsolete artifact of tabletop PnP days. When you had several people playing together, it made sense to have different roles (just like they did later with MMOs), but for a single player game, it makes no sense whatsoever.

 

[behold_a_man]

This whole specialization and division of labor is an obsolete artifact of tabletop PnP days. When you had several people playing together, it made sense to have different roles (just like they did later with MMOs), but for a single player game, it makes no sense whatsoever.

More like an obsolete artifact of the Neolithic Revolution. If I am going somewhere dangerous and I risk getting a stray bullet, having my limbs broken, or getting slashed with a poisoned dagger, why would I want to go alone rather than get a companion to heal me or carry me to safety if some misfortune happens? To fulfill some Rambo fantasy? It's not like I can play as some augmented special operative like JC Denton or the genetically enhanced witcher in every RPG.

 

[Bad Sector]

Didn't Ishar (or some game like that) have a mechanic where party members could dislike each other and perform worse or vote to do actions and ignore the player? On one hand, on paper it sounds like a neat sim-ish idea that could add more variety and depth to what you do in the game. On the other hand, TBH, when i play an RPG with a party i want the party members to shut up and obediently do what i tell them. AI in games is almost always bad when it comes to making "realistic" decisions anyway (imagine an elf member being mad at a dwarf member for pissing in his morning coffee, as valid the reason might be, not performing at their best when facing a group of deadly dragons is both unrealistic and stupid - and annoying from a player's perspective) and i often have my own goals in mind (e.g. explore every pixel in the game's world) to babysit what are essentially autistic digital manbabies.

IMO if party members affect each other it should be predictable and consistent (e.g. one member's skill improves/degrades others'). That is good as it helps with the strategic and party building aspect of the game.

 

[NecroLord]

you start drinking with your male companion, share funny stories about whores, you both become alcoholics in chapter 2, abandon main quest till one of you die from liver failure mid chapter 4(guy with lower constitution)

GLORIOUS Dwarf BEARD party!
Anyway, to the OP, I assume you are speaking about party dynamic and synergy? Let's say the party Paladin is romantically involved with the party Sorceress and she up and dies one day. Naturally, the Paladin is deeply affected. Should this affect his performance in combat and other tasks?
I think it is a matter of making each character interesting and with his own motivations.
Toee has Party Alignment. All Party members need to be one step from the Good-Evil, Lawful-Chaotic axis depending on chosen party alignment.
Say it's a Neutral Good Party - Lawful Good, Neutral Good, Chaotic Good and True Neutral are the allowed alignments.

 

[vota DC]

Persona did It well. You get special attacks of you improve the relationship with companions. There are also special team attack between companions but they are fixed.

 

[Nifft Batuff]

The problem is that when people think about relationships in RPGs, they still think the Bioware way. Even Larian, in BG3, still copy the way companions/relationships were implemented in the Bioware games.
In JRPGs there are many examples how to implement relationships that can affect mechanics and combat strategy.

 

[luj1]

Relationships between party members (Friendships, romance, rivalries, to name some examples) have minimal to no impact on gameplay

Arcanum and SWKotOR 1 did this well.

 

[NecroLord]

The problem is that when people think about relationships in RPGs, they still think the Bioware way. Even Larian, in BG3, still copy the way companions/relationships were implemented in the Bioware games.
In JRPGs there are many examples how to implement relationships that can affect mechanics and combat strategy.

Yeah, it's hard to wash away the Bioware taint.
Like I said, I think it also comes down to alignments. Just look at the alignment of the characters and try to think about how they will interact.
Lawful Good-Chaotic Good? Many disagreements probably, especially on matters concerning law and governance, but also probably strong friendship and mutual respect.
Lawful Evil-Chaotic Evil? Just look at the Blood War...