post any random Mario thought on your mind

Rinka Hayami said:
Yeah, you're right, absolutely. What if Mario also had a strength stat that affected his damage, and you could level that up alongside HP, FP, and whatever else you need.
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I could get behind that, since boosting your attack power in the old games was locked to upgrades to your jump and hammer and the Power Plus badges. It'd be cool to be able to choose to deal more damage.

Enemy health may need to be scaled up to balance though, which would make challenge runs... interesting.
 
YES. Let enemies scale as you play. Goombas could level up the further you are in the game and randomly gain stats (albeit very slowly because we don't want them to get too strong.)

Defense could be a stat that exists more prominently as well, so boosting your attack power now sounds like it could really come in handy.

And what about Speed and Skill? Skill will be a stat that increases your likelihood of getting a critical hit while speed helps you avoid enemy attacks better. But the more skill the enemies have, the harder it will be to avoid them, but enemies won;t be able to crit you.
 
Rinka Hayami said:
YES. Let enemies scale as you play. Goombas could level up the further you are in the game and randomly gain stats (albeit very slowly because we don't want them to get too strong.)

Defense could be a stat that exists more prominently as well, so boosting your attack power now sounds like it could really come in handy.

And what about Speed and Skill? Skill will be a stat that increases your likelihood of getting a critical hit while speed helps you avoid enemy attacks better. But the more skill the enemies have, the harder it will be to avoid them, but enemies won;t be able to crit you.
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I was thinking more along the lines of Goombas just having more HP at the start to compensate for you potentially leveling up attack power but this seems like a more fun idea.

We don't have Critical Hits in Paper Mario but honestly they'd fit right in. Like a 5 or 10% chance of a crit that deals extra damage, then add a couple Badges centered around that mechanic (one badge increases likelihood of a crit, another is a Hammer attack that has a high chance of crit, another makes you immune to enemy crits, etc.) and you have yourself a fun new twist that can turn the tide of battle. Speed could work but I fear that might conflict with Paper Mario's simplicity considering its very rigid turn-based structure.

If we're adding this many stats though then it'd probably be best to go the Mario & Luigi route: every stat gets boosted every time you level up and you can pick which one you want to give a bonus to.
 
Rinka Hayami said:
With that out of the way, I agree. Bowser was at his best in the first game, and pretty much was lowered ever since then. But I think that Color Splash did a pretty good job, and that it would be much better also if they didn't revert him back to his SPM self DURING THE FINAL BATTLE?! It's anticlimatic as hell.
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That still annoys me. The game tries to claim that the black paint is making him more evil but we see him do absolutely nothing that the regular Bowser doesn't already do.

Like one of the examples of how "more evil" he's gotten is Peach telling you that he laughed at a banzai bill being fired at a place.
 
I know an RPG with a card system that's decent: Baten Katios, and you guys suggestion of a better card system reminds me of that. What about, don't make the cards consumable, they're part of a deck, and once you're out of cards, you just reshuffle them.

Also, another thing new Paper Mario games could implement is removing EXP and level up all together (like it was in Sticker Star and Color Splash), and have your stats be entirely dependent on your equipment, like Darkspore sort of. That means, frequent equipment drops in the game and frequent ways to power yourselves up. It could go in tandem with enemies scaling their difficulty, as stronger enemies require stronger equipment.
 
Redshift said:
Also, another thing new Paper Mario games could implement is removing EXP and level up all together (like it was in Sticker Star and Color Splash), and have your stats be entirely dependent on your equipment, like Darkspore sort of. That means, frequent equipment drops in the game and frequent ways to power yourselves up. It could go in tandem with enemies scaling their difficulty, as stronger enemies require stronger equipment.
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Imo not sure if I agree. It felt like another welcome layer of progression and I don't see any good reason to get rid of it.
 
I've played a game that did something like that where the strength of your character is mostly derived from that, with EXP taking a backseat. It can work.
 
Redshift said:
I've played a game that did something like that where the strength of your character is mostly derived from that, with EXP taking a backseat. It can work.
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Darkspore's one of those games, where equipment is actually tied to your level, not how many enemies you slay.
 
So all the super mario advance games got spiffy little intros to show the events in the game themselves and what your goal is.

Except super mario advance. Pity too since the opening as described in the NES manual would be amusing to watch.