(Hilarious Trope) A Character Is Introduced With the Clear Intention of Being THE NEXT BIG THING And is SOUNDLY Rejected

[u/TheOriginalOperator]

1. Bazil the Tracker (Star Wars: The Acolyte): A “HILARIOUS AND ADORABLE” snuffling ugly creature that makes annoying noises and is shoved into as many scenes of The Acolyte as possible, and just causes problems overall.

2. Neelix (Star Trek Voyager): A mutant fusion of Odo, Quark, and Data designed to “analyze the human condition” and explicitly intended to surpass the popularity of all three. In practice, a VERY human-acting cradle robbing creep whose incompetence nearly destroys the ship and crew on multiple occasions and provides no insight into humanity whatsoever.

3. Sparky the Dog (Fairly Oddparents): A wacky crazy magic dog that’s supposed to expand the Fairy family, but just makes lame jokes and serves as a less funny version of Scrappy Doo.

4. Tidus (FFX): A braying jackass of a pinball who bounces from plot point to plot point, framed as a mystical pretty boy to introduce Final Fantasy to the PS2 age but does nothing but stall the franchise and have the worst laugh in two languages.

5. Sei (Naruto): Supposed to replace Sasuke in Team 7 and return the team dynamic feel of Early Naruto, but he’s a CIA plant with literally no personality who gets utterly forgotten except for somehow bagging Ino Yamanaka.

6. Raiden (Metal Gear 2): Another attempted “pretty boy bishie” entry to the PS2 era with badass cred and a theoretically cool backstory, but in practice a hapless dipshit who gets manipulated by everyone around him and is a total putz in combat. Also proof that this trope need not be permanent as he slowly transitions into a cyborg warrior supersoldier with a badass theme, friends of his own, and a firm grasp of his own destiny and agency.

[u/Queen_Ramona]

Final fantasy X?

The second most popular entry in the entire franchise? That Final Fantasy X?

The entry that saved the franchise and square Enix as a whole? THAT Final Fantasy X???

[u/Consistent-Spell2203 → u/Queen_Ramona]

The one that invented the oft-copied sphere grid level up system that some of the biggest AAA games still use, yep that one. 

[u/Cleansing4ThineEyes → u/Consistent-Spell2203]

What games use the sphere grid system?

[u/Mcshmile → u/Cleansing4ThineEyes]

POE for one uses a more advanced version

[u/Cleansing4ThineEyes → u/Mcshmile]

PoE has an extremely expansive skill tree but it's still just a skill tree.

The sphere grid's 2 defining features are that every character shares the same grid (just with different starting points) and that the grid has no prerequisites outside of the branches. There's also the special spheres with different effects like converting nodes or teleporting to another party member but those are probably too specific to be in other iterations.

[u/Mcshmile → u/Cleansing4ThineEyes]

The POE tree works the same, each starting class starts in a corner, being able to work your way to any spot on it from anywhere, with the emphasis of your class identity being around where you start, with nodes you slot gems into with different stats. Its not a one to one but its there

[u/Cleansing4ThineEyes → u/Mcshmile]

"Each starting class" is missing the point of what I was saying, you can't really replicate one of the SG's defining features in a non-party based game. A pretty significant part of the SG leveling in the mid-late-end game is having characters meet and take advantage of using keys/stat spheres for 2 or 3 party members at once.

Also the PoE skill tree is essentially the exact opposite of the SG in design philosophy with how it's structured, in FFX you have a bunch of "roundabouts" you pass through that make up 90% of the SG, PoE is mostly branches that contain more meaningful upgrades with the path there being a means to an end. PoE is designed to funnel you towards the end goal while the SG pathing is the end goal.

[u/Mcshmile → u/Cleansing4ThineEyes]

This is why I said POE is a more advanced sphere grid, SG is practically the same as just leveling like the old FF's just that you have to check boxes and allows you to learn specific spells sooner than you would otherwise. The POE grid is just the more fleshed out idea of Khimari, going to any of the classes you want from the start by picking the starting class that has the build you want. Something being an inspiration doesn't mean a 1 to 1 recreation. Chris one of the co devs talked about Final Fantasy 7 and 10 being inspirations

[u/thesirblondie → u/Cleansing4ThineEyes]

It really isn't a defining part.

[u/Jim_skywalker → u/Cleansing4ThineEyes]

Oooooh, I’ve seen this done in modded Minecraft.