I wouldn't do that, simply because intentionally making characters stronger or weaker than each other in-game because that's the way they were in the source is one of the primary reasons why most anime fighting games (to be favorable, most licensed fighting games in general, but most of those are anime based) are terrible.
The idea here is to build a game where all of the characters can fight equally with their own unique moves and abilities, even if they couldn't in the actual show, and showing their power (or lack thereof) in other ways that aren't necessarily debilitating or overpowering in the actual game.
Like, for example, showing off Lapis' incredible power by making her an incredible zoning character who can hit large portions of the screen, but would be a Glass Cannon and/or wouldn't be able to do so indefinitely. Which would funnily enough make her a hard counter for the idea I have for Jasper.
edited 28th Nov '16 9:10:10 PM by KnownUnknown
I'm basically going off of Dragon Ball Z: Supersonic Warriors 2's formula here, where certain characters were just more powerful than other characters, but the weaker characters were still fun and satisfying to play as, with unique tricks that allowed them to outplay stronger characters is you used them right. Krillin didn't hit anywhere near as hard as Broly, but he was much faster and much more combo-heavy.
That sounds less like characters being stronger and weaker than each other and more like them being balanced with different abilities. For example, one of Guilty Gear's classic characters is a hulking dude who can do more damage than basically any other in a single hit, but is so slow that the player still has to use skill to be effective with him.
I'm approaching this as huge fan of both Steven U and fighting games, and the thing I'm trying to avoid is the sort of thing that happened in the DBZ Budokai Tenkaichi series, where certain characters were just more powerful in every way by default, and there was no reason not to use them if you wanted not to get curbstomped. Or like how Awakenings in the Ninja Storm series are (or at least were when I used to play it) laughably unbalanced, with some doing basically nothing special while others transformed the player into unflinchable death machines.
Or even like how in Marvel Vs Capcom 2, there were only like five characters worth using, with a few more only being useful as assists, though that was less them making characters as strong as in the source and more crappy character balance in general. Generally, being far more powerful than others should be limited to bosses/minibosses or temporary moves, and being far less powerful should be limited to joke characters.
You don't want to do that. You want the player to be able to main Peridot if they want to and flawless victory Jasper, even though she'd never be able to do that in the show itself. The game itself is more fun that way.
edited 28th Nov '16 9:25:47 PM by KnownUnknown
Well, I'm not basing my system on Budokai Tenkaichi or Ninja Storm. In Supersonic Warriors 2, the differences between characters tiers existed, and were tangible, but the 'weakest' character, Kid Gohan/Dr. Gero/Ginyu, wasn't so much weaker than the 'strongest' character, SS3 Gotenks/Super Buu, that victory was actually impossible. You had a bit of an uphill battle, but there were definitely advantages that the weakest characters had over the strongest characters, if you played them right. I'm thinking something similar here: Peridot would obviously be the weakest character, but she would have some intricacies that, say, Jasper would lack that would allow her to fight on a more even playing field.
<watches a few games of Supersonic Warriors 2>
Okay, so it's one of the previous games in the series that gave us Extreme Butoden (That's also where you're getting the "value" system from, I'd guess). And it does both - it has characters that are balanced by way of being faster/stronger/having better defense/unique moves, and also characters that are simply more overpowering or less capable than others.
We seem to be talking about different things. The former is just character balance, not actually being stronger or weaker. If Peridot, for example, has low damage output but can fight evenly with the rest of the cast regardless due to her actual abiltiies (without needing far more skill than the other player to overcome bad balance, anyway) she's not "weaker" than them. Likewise, if Jasper does crazy damage but can still be checked by the rest of the cast due to her weaknesses, she's not "stronger" than them.
On the other hand, if Jasper has crazy damage output and naturally checks the other characters' abilities such that fighting her with everyone is an uphill battle because her strengths outweigh her weaknesses, then that's a case of a character being stronger/better even if a sufficiently skilled player could fight though it and still win. If it's widespread among several characters, it's a sign of poor character balance. It happens in every game, really - it's impossible to completely avoid, but it shouldn't be intentional.
edited 28th Nov '16 10:15:22 PM by KnownUnknown
The first Capcom vs SNK did the whole tiered-characters with certain values thing and it was for the worse IMO. Especially because the meta may end up considering characters assigned with arbitrarily high values to actually be low tier and vice versa.
Anyway I'm really digging the ideas you've got so far Known Unknown
Regarding the fusions I can't think of anything particularly good but I'm thinking of striker characters in the style of KOF or summonable super attacks.
I think the easiest thing to do is just, well balance stuff. Perfect balance is impossible, of course, but as long as there are a good amount of viable characters, and as long as you'd be willing to make changes to accommodate an ever changing meta (nevermind that on anything but the absolute highest level of play a lot of competitive games are fairy well balanced).
You also have to understand that not all forms of balance are equal. A lot of competitive games try to run with the "harder hitter, slower hitter" concept and fail miserably, because in many games speed matters more than being able to tank damage or being able to dish out damage. That's something that can't be solved easily.
Re: Fusions: I think most should be resized characters. It's how I'd like to see it done in a hypothetical fully fledged Steven Universe RPG: Guest party members that appear in certain chapters of the story that depend on the circumstances taking place at the time. Treating them as their own characters, and not simply "super moves" that the characters can activate seems more fitting to how fusion is treated in the show proper.
@45203 If you're seeing the ones I've seen (the Mystery Mini blind boxes), yes, those are Funko-produced. Funko is most visible via the Funko Pop line of vinyl statues, but they actually have a fairly wide line of figures. I'm a bit torn on the Mystery Mini line - I like that they resemble the original characters more (which cuts across the entire line - I also have Adventure Time and Mega Man figures from the Mystery Mini line), but I dislike the variable rarity - if your particular favorite character is slotted to be more rare, it can be frustrating to think of how many you'll have to buy to secure it (sorry, Peridot fans, she's in the 1-in-36 rarity). And SU is actually one of the better ones about the rarity issue, but my rant about that gets seriously off-topic.
@45204 I was thinking about how well SU would translate into Lego - between how well the Adventure Time figures came out for LEGO Dimensions as well as the look and feel of the Cloud Cuckoo Palace set from The LEGO Movie, I think it'd be pretty easy to translate into Lego.
For a Bionicle-style build, I'd probaby try to construct Garnet's hair out of traditional Lego and find connectors with pins to attach it. I'd also try to use elements usually reserved for structure sides (castle sets used to be great for such pieces, but I don't think any are currently in production) - they're usually much thinner on all points other than the pegs and the insertion points, cutting down on the weight.
@45208 Maybe a variation of the ratio system used for Capcom vs. SNK: Millennium Fight 2000 - each character could count for a certain number of points, which determines just who you could bring. For example, you could pick Ruby and Sapphire at one each, or Garnet as two, and what team moves you could do depends on who you pick (so, for example, you would have completely different special moves if you took Ruby and Sapphire and have them fuse versus if you had just selected Garnet).
Also, as a Mythology Gag, I'd have it such that Jasper would be at the normal ratio limit, meaning that she couldn't team (and thus fuse) with anyone outside of special event matchups in-story (or if you allow for higher team ratios in the options). That said, I can only imagine the complaints that would cause.
@45210 Well, if nothing else, I think how flat Cartoon Network: Punch Time Explosion was received means that an official Smash Bros-style Steven Universe game is unlikely to come out, because the suits would probably worry that it wouldn't do well (which was honestly more a question of execution... PTE had some neat ideas that were hobbled by horrible execution).
@45216 The other way to play it would be a wide play field that just zooms in and out depending on who is fighting and how close they are. You'd probably want to give a dash mechanic to all the small and medium gems/fusions, but take it away in exchange for more powers for the larger ones.
@45217 You're looking for Stance System.
@45222 I think Garnet would be fairly simple if you just follow the implications of the series for a more fluid and enlarged system. A fusion can use all of the abilities of their components, yes? Garnet should, in theory, be able to use Ruby's fire and Sapphire's ice just fine - give her some of those abilities to use.
Reminder: Offscreen Villainy does not count towards Complete Monster.Hasn't Zuke come out as nonbinary? Is "she" an appropriate pronoun, or do they not care either way?
Oh God! Natural light!They haven't made that clear, to the best of my knowledge. I've been using "they" by default for Zuke for now, but yeah. It's reasonable for there to be pronoun inertia, especially without clear preference given from the person in question. (That, and surely there are people who aren't/weren't aware that Zuke came out as N/B and thus didn't know to question it at all in the first place. Or people who don't recognize N/B as legitimate and thus would not call them "they" in any case, but that's a different kettle of assheads.)
Regarding my Bionicle Garnet: oh, I'm almost done with her. I'm using the more modern style for her joints and such, and she's not very big, so she's not super complex. I'm terrible with heads and faces, so I just went with the generic Glatorian head, and added a big red (because I have very few black LEGO pieces) afro attached with the three plug points on it. It's also of Season 1 Garnet, mostly using red and black pieces because finding red-violet pieces of the new building style is either ludicrously difficult or actually impossible.
More Aqua Teen/Crystal Gem mashups:
Depending on the skit, Pearl and Peridot trade off being Shake.
As for the merch, this is an issue with a lot of shows it would seem. If you don't fit the exact criteria, you don't get toys and suddenly you're facing an issue of how to make money. Older fans aren't guaranteed sources of income, and boys don't want to play with girls toys. Look at Studio Mir. Korra had nary a figure during its run but Voltron toys are set to flood shelves next year. Young Justice attracted too many girls so it was undesirable for toys. SU, because of its aesthetics, presents the same problem.
A fighting game seems like an easy shot if you get the right people.
On the idea of an SU fighting game, I imagined that Peridot could be sort of an unusual version of a stance-based fighter. In her regular (small) form, she would be a quick character with comparatively weak moves, but the tools to play a strong game regardless. However, she would also have a super that allows her to equip her limb enhancers, giving her a more hard-hitting version of her previous moveset (with lasers in place of ferrokinesis) at the cost of slowing her down. Likewise, she would have a super in her enhanced form that destroys her limb enhancers and sends her back to small Peridot.
edited 29th Nov '16 5:16:21 PM by TheFox
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For Voltron are they putting Pidge in the lineup.
edited 29th Nov '16 5:38:43 PM by RhymeBeat
The Crystal Caverns A bird's gotta sing.Not to get OT, but I never believed the whole "boys wont buy female action figures" line, since I grew up with GI Joe, which had several females, all of whom had prominent placement in the show/comic/other media. New topic, is there any possibility that other Gems have landed on Earth outside of Beach City, or are the ones we've already seen the only ones who hit Earth?
They'd really have to be on the down low not to be noticed if they were. And this late in the game, it would probably come off as an Ass Pull.

Okay, I've officially WAY overthought this.
My idea is to have each character be represented by a number to estimate about how strong they are, you can have a four fighter team, and you can only have a team where the aforementioned number collectively is equal to or lesser than 30.
Singular Characters:
Steven: 6
Connie: 5
Amethyst: 6
Pearl: 7
Ruby: 5
Sapphire: 5
Peridot: 4
Lapis: 12
Bismuth: 8
Jasper: 9
Rose Quartz: 10
Fused Characters:
Stevonnie: 11
Garnet: 10
Opal: 13
Sugilite: 16
Sardonyx: 17
Alexandrite: 23
Malachite: 21
Smokey Quartz (Steven): 12
Rainbow Quartz (Rose): 17
The reason Lapis is so strong is to justify Malachite's power, because it kind of makes sense for her to be that powerful, and to basically force you to use Peridot alongside her on teams if you want to also use some stronger characters, due to the team cost restriction. The heights of the fusions is literally just the height of the characters making them up, added together, meaning Alexandrite is only a little over twice as tall as Garnet, but she hunches over, Malachite is as tall as Jasper+Lapis, but only from her head to her front feet, meaning she still has length in her centaur body.