Experience or Point-Based Characters?
Tactics Game Characters
One of the most pivotal areas of tactical, turn-based games, that largely influences the general gameplay and player involvement, is the characters themselves. Take Final Fantasy Tactics, for example. In this game, players begin with a couple of characters, starting out weak, and developing these characters as the game progresses. This approach to character development is what I call experience-based character development. After each battle, the characters gain levels, and in turn unlock more powerful skills and abilities. They also find treasure as they progress, giving them more useful equipment, items, and weapons. You could also call a game like Final Fantasy Tactics an RPG, or role playing game, in which the characters go through a story and develop and grow as they travel around in an epic adventure.
The alternative to allowing characters to develop by acquiring experience is to use a point based system. In this approach, each character, as well as each skill and equipment and benefit characters can receive, are assigned a point value. Players assemble their armies by spending a set amount of points to create evenly balanced armies. Tactics 100 is such a game that implements this type of system.
There are advantages to each, as you may surmise. Experience-based approaches allow players to invest more time and effort into developing their perfect army. Every battle makes their army stronger, and levels up their characters. An obvious disadvantage to this approach is that it does not guarantee fair battles. A more leveled up army has an obvious advantage over a lower level army. Point-based systems overcomes this challenge, at the cost of never allowing the characters to get stronger over time. One way to avoid this pitfall is to allow the unlocking of certain customizable features, allowing players more choices over time that don’t necessarily give them an edge over other players, simply more options to choose from.
Now that you have an idea what these two approaches entail, which would you prefer. Submit your vote using the poll on the right to let the rest of us know your opinion. Feel free to share your thoughts via comments here too.