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Acra
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I got into game development in hopes of making friends and gaining some sense of self-worth.
Boy, that was the most foolish decision of my life.
I also do some written LPs of RMN games over in this topic. It's not as big as I like, but I'm busier than I like, too.
Boy, that was the most foolish decision of my life.
I also do some written LPs of RMN games over in this topic. It's not as big as I like, but I'm busier than I like, too.
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Is there life after finishing a game?
This is something that honestly terrifies me. It's no exaggeration to say it's the only thing motivating me and keeping me alive. What if, after doing absolutely everything within my power, I still fail completely and totally? That all my efforts haven't even helped a single person? So long as I'm still working on it, I at least have some sort of flimsy excuse to hide behind. That nobody cares, that it's no good because it isn't done yet.
Just added cursor memory to DR. Question is, what should be the default?
For clarity and context, I'm talking about it remembering the position of what spell you last selected in battle. DR in particular has its spell selection screen consisting of a 12x2 grid, which, in my experience, is quite large. Cursor memory isn't something I typically use or enable in other games, so that's probably why it took me 10 years to add it. I'm curious as to whether other people utilize such options or not, and whether the default setting should be on, off, or a third option, to reset position at the start of each battle.
I gave Etrian Odyssey I the old college try. I've got a love/hate relationship with it.
author=Sgt M
Other than a few QOL improvements, the games are all very samey. EO1 is pretty much the "gist" of the series and the subsequent installments are basically map packs. If you're struggling to get into now, it's not gonna get much better.
I can agree with this basic sentiment, but it's atrociously underselling how important that quality of life and balance actually is. Early series classes are extremely unbalanced, have little room for growth and personalization, and are littered with worthless 'trap' skills that do little damage or literally aren't programmed right.
While all the ideas are there from the start, I don't think it really hits its stride until EOIII or maybe EOIV. IV also doesn't want to just rip your spine out from the first second, and you can progress through floors at a much more stable clip. It's definitely a more deliberate series, but physically making that map progression and having ample options to build a party more than make up for it. Or rather, the deliberate pacing makes those more exciting. If you just blew through floor after floor, who'd care about carefully mapping everything out?
author=Gourd_Clae
You make your own maps in Etrian Odyssey? That sounds like a lot of fun. I might have to try it then!
EOIV and EOV both have demos on the 3DS eShop, as do the remakes of the originals as EO Untold and EOU2, though they're stuck with a pre-determined story party, which IMO takes out one of the biggest selling points of the series. All four let you transfer data to the respective full game if you take the bite. And they're pretty meaty demos.
Why so many devs like to make the beginning of their game as hard as possible? It just makes it hard for players to want to play your game. Save the hard parts for later, when they are actually invested in it!
I'd say this is a very real issue in proper games, too. Atlus and the Etrian Odyssey series in particular comes to mind.
I think most of it simply comes back to scaling and having very little options at the start. It's not unheard of for a character to almost have their HP double from level 1 to level 2, with other stats seeing similar growths. Once you get that initial footing, those enemies that could one-shot your would-be tank become total jokes very quickly.
Other things, like getting to buy gear for the first time, or getting party members, are also points where the player grows astronomically in strength. It's definitely not a good idea to put the player that hard on the back foot at the start with no lower floor to get to terms with things, but I can conceptually see it useful if you wanted to set up a 'NOW you're a proper adventurer, and not a worthless dirt farmer' sort of moment.
I've certainly fallen into this trap before. Multiple times. Ultimately, I fixed it by creating a whole weaker tier of encounters and giving the enemy spawning formulas extra rules before a certain point, to ensure nothing too scary or too many at one time could pop up. Also giving the player a ton more money at the start, giving extra revival and healing items, and redoing scaling on equipment pricing were all factors.
I think most of it simply comes back to scaling and having very little options at the start. It's not unheard of for a character to almost have their HP double from level 1 to level 2, with other stats seeing similar growths. Once you get that initial footing, those enemies that could one-shot your would-be tank become total jokes very quickly.
Other things, like getting to buy gear for the first time, or getting party members, are also points where the player grows astronomically in strength. It's definitely not a good idea to put the player that hard on the back foot at the start with no lower floor to get to terms with things, but I can conceptually see it useful if you wanted to set up a 'NOW you're a proper adventurer, and not a worthless dirt farmer' sort of moment.
I've certainly fallen into this trap before. Multiple times. Ultimately, I fixed it by creating a whole weaker tier of encounters and giving the enemy spawning formulas extra rules before a certain point, to ensure nothing too scary or too many at one time could pop up. Also giving the player a ton more money at the start, giving extra revival and healing items, and redoing scaling on equipment pricing were all factors.
Is it ever a good idea to have the first one or two encounters of your game be extremely difficult?
Now having some context, I can see three ways to have a higher-than-usual difficulty, without being overly unfair to the player (though I still don't super-recommend it).
It's one thing to have weird, unpredictable enemies, but throwing them at a point when you don't know what your own skills are just isn't cool. If the party and the game's mechanics are truly that unorthodox, maybe have an optional training area or something similar before going on the first mission.
The second is the shakiest, and that's to have some kind of limited get-out-of-jail-free item. Whether that's some kind of fancy tech that's expensive to produce that cripples foes for a bit or fully restores the party, even from death, or what, is up to your discretion. Probably the crux here is that its usage as a crutch is limited, because if the difficulty doesn't drop after a short while, it's only going to make things worse when that crutch runs out.
And of course, good-ol' difficulty levels is an option, and judging by you continually ratcheting down the difficulty, I'd say you already have pretty good ideas of what stats should look like for hard/very hard/impossible difficulties.
It's one thing to have weird, unpredictable enemies, but throwing them at a point when you don't know what your own skills are just isn't cool. If the party and the game's mechanics are truly that unorthodox, maybe have an optional training area or something similar before going on the first mission.
The second is the shakiest, and that's to have some kind of limited get-out-of-jail-free item. Whether that's some kind of fancy tech that's expensive to produce that cripples foes for a bit or fully restores the party, even from death, or what, is up to your discretion. Probably the crux here is that its usage as a crutch is limited, because if the difficulty doesn't drop after a short while, it's only going to make things worse when that crutch runs out.
And of course, good-ol' difficulty levels is an option, and judging by you continually ratcheting down the difficulty, I'd say you already have pretty good ideas of what stats should look like for hard/very hard/impossible difficulties.
Is it ever a good idea to have the first one or two encounters of your game be extremely difficult?
It's probably fine if it's something like Final Fantasy II, where you're absolutely slaughtered in an encounter within seconds of starting. So long as it's abundantly clear 'you're not supposed to win this fight, at all', it's likely not an issue. The less clear that loss is, the worse it is, as until you die, the player'll probably feel like they're doing something wrong.
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