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How to know if your game is interesting and if your intro is good?
author=Sailerius
Start by figuring out what it is that's interesting about your game. What questions (and answers) does it raise about society or human nature that you've never seen addressed (or at least, never addressed the same way) in another work before? What is it about your game that will change the way people will look at the world?
I would like to make that advice more generic. Rather than going with society or human nature specifically, I would advice thinking about what is good about your game period. Is an aspect of the story, the gameplay or just atmosphere? Whatever it is, try to show that (non awkwardly) in the intro. Your intro is good if it convinced me that the rest of your game will be good.
Other than that, a lot of rules that applies to other scenes also applies to the intro. Are you good at making various scenes interesting, exiting, intense or whatever? If so, then chance is you can do the same with the intro. If not, then expect that you will have mediocre success doing any of those in the intro as well.
Equipment, Abilities, and Stats: How to Adjust Correctly
Typically, I calculate what values I need in advance. I almost always have to change the HP values after testing, but I can usually nail attack, defense, magic and magic defense at the first try.
This makes testing quick, but the calculating will however take time instead.
This makes testing quick, but the calculating will however take time instead.
[Poll] A poll and discussion about random battle encounters: how they may be implemented.
author=Sooz
That could literally be said about any mechanic ever. It's not a useful contribution to a discussion on how to do things well, is all I am saying.
I wish I could agree, Punkit's comment looks very captain obvious after all. Unfortunately, it doesn't appear to be obvious at all. The idea that the rate of encounters and the battles themselves have a huge impact on the fun is very often overlooked. A lot of the "use something else than random encounters" proposals comes as a solution to random encounters that are boring and to numerous.
[Poll] A poll and discussion about random battle encounters: how they may be implemented.
author=Sooz
I think it depends on the game. Yeah, in some games that's the setup, but imagine, say, Pokemon without repels. Also, unless you're specifically designing a resource management survival style game, you're potentially setting up an unwinnable situation for a player who's had a run of bad luck and just wants to get out and heal and try again. It all depends on the game you're making.
I can not comment on Pokemon since I haven't played much of it. As for the rest, I'm afraid I'm not getting what you're trying to say. It seems to me that it's when you're setting up a survival management situation that the player can get into an unwinnable situation. It can be solved with escape to entrance items/spells though.
I think the problem is that in most other genres, the gameplay is considered the main draw, whereas with RPGs, there are more players who legit play for the story and characters, and think of the battles as obstacles to getting more of what they're really after.
Whether or not you feel this is an appropriate way to approach games, it's worth it to at least consider this audience in your game design. My argument for having an option to turn off encounters is based on that: It's entirely optional, so if you're a player who'd rather go through all the battles, grind, etc., it's completely possible for you to ignore the "turn off button" and just keep on keepin on. It's a thing that's there solely to make your game accessible to people who are Bad At Games, and I don't think it's going to have much effect on anyone who's already Good At Games.
(Granted, if your game is solely based around the battles and whatnot, then I doubt it'd attract a lot of the story-only crowd, but for the vast majority of devs here, there seems to be at least some interest in story-driven works.)
Were you to go trough the trouble of correctly tuning the encounters (which less than 10% of commercial games does), then you're probably not designing for that audience. I do also not buy the "it's optional" argument, the mere fact that the option does exist changes the context of things. If you for example try to immerse the playing with a sense of danger, that option will cause a certain percentage to snap out of the immersion. Options have a psychological effect even if not used.
[Poll] A poll and discussion about random battle encounters: how they may be implemented.
What I would prefer is if random encounters could be shut of when the player either beats the dungeon boss or reaches a too high level. Basically, when the player is proven to be more than capable of handling the encounters, the option to disable them is granted.
I do not think that you should give the player the option to shut of encounters prior to that. It makes no sense to me, the monsters are supposed to be hostile creatures that makes adventuring dangerous. You should not be able to choose whether or not you should encounter them, no more than you can choose whether or not a mugger is going to try robbing you.
Now, there are some problems with random encounters, it's for example very annoying if you run into one right before you're going to open that treasure chest or talk to that wandering NPC. However, I think the main problem is often the battles themselves rather than the encounters.
A common problem is that fights are in general too easy and the encounters are not engaging. Since the fights aren't engaging, you don't want to fight them and since the battles are easy, you can get away with skipping a lot of them. This makes the most rational approach to fight far less than the author intended which in turns means the player will want a feature that in one or another way makes fighting random encounters optional. This makes the encounter ring or on screen encounters (who moves very slow) seem very appealing.
However, if the encounters are correctly tuned, then any option to simple skip random encounters makes far less sense. I do not see people who play first person shooters complain that it's too hard to skip fights. Ditto for the vast majority of other genres.
That said, if you do fail to make encounters engaging, then the encounter ring is probably the best option. The player can fight as many as needed and then skip them.
I do not think that you should give the player the option to shut of encounters prior to that. It makes no sense to me, the monsters are supposed to be hostile creatures that makes adventuring dangerous. You should not be able to choose whether or not you should encounter them, no more than you can choose whether or not a mugger is going to try robbing you.
Now, there are some problems with random encounters, it's for example very annoying if you run into one right before you're going to open that treasure chest or talk to that wandering NPC. However, I think the main problem is often the battles themselves rather than the encounters.
A common problem is that fights are in general too easy and the encounters are not engaging. Since the fights aren't engaging, you don't want to fight them and since the battles are easy, you can get away with skipping a lot of them. This makes the most rational approach to fight far less than the author intended which in turns means the player will want a feature that in one or another way makes fighting random encounters optional. This makes the encounter ring or on screen encounters (who moves very slow) seem very appealing.
However, if the encounters are correctly tuned, then any option to simple skip random encounters makes far less sense. I do not see people who play first person shooters complain that it's too hard to skip fights. Ditto for the vast majority of other genres.
That said, if you do fail to make encounters engaging, then the encounter ring is probably the best option. The player can fight as many as needed and then skip them.
[RMVX ACE] The deepest thing you've done with variables, common events and switches?
I made a system which would automatically spawn on screen encounters randomly at pre selected locations. You just copied and pasted certain events at the desired locations and the game would automatically make a list of those locations and then randomly move the on screen encounters to those locations. If you finish an encounter, all encounters within four squares of you would despawn to prevent chain ganking. Also included various other features such as the ability to easily randomly decide the troop you fight.
Most of the complications came from making sure the self switches behaves even if the player moves to another map and back and making sure that while creating the system took some time, it's quick to use.
It was actually created in VA, but I converted the system to Ace via a converter, so now it's an Ace system.
Most of the complications came from making sure the self switches behaves even if the player moves to another map and back and making sure that while creating the system took some time, it's quick to use.
It was actually created in VA, but I converted the system to Ace via a converter, so now it's an Ace system.
[RMVX ACE] Stealing an enemy's item to prevent their use.
How does your steal skill work? Does it have a chance to fail, or rather, does it have a chance to fail against the relevant enemies. If it's 100%, then you can always give the item using enemies an invisible state when the battle start that is needed for the AI to use the item replicating skill and then make the steal skill remove that state.
The appeal of JRPG's
For me it's two things. The first appeal is the getting stronger mechanic. Other games I tend to play are metroidvanias and so called ARPGs (mainly games like Diablo) which also has a get stronger mechanic. This is becoming less of a factor though as other genres tend to adopt this idea, although most games does so in a way that's less appealing to me.
The second appeal is the variance. There's towns vs dungeons. In towns there's also the difference between gearing up and talking to townspeople while in dungeons there's the difference between exploring and battles. I have noticed that more action oriented games are sometimes more fun, but I get tired of them much quicker. This means that I'm not fond of when a JRPG cuts towns out to allow the player to focus on exploring.
That said, I'm getting less and less fond of JRPGs because they also have traits I don't like, but that's for another topic.
The second appeal is the variance. There's towns vs dungeons. In towns there's also the difference between gearing up and talking to townspeople while in dungeons there's the difference between exploring and battles. I have noticed that more action oriented games are sometimes more fun, but I get tired of them much quicker. This means that I'm not fond of when a JRPG cuts towns out to allow the player to focus on exploring.
That said, I'm getting less and less fond of JRPGs because they also have traits I don't like, but that's for another topic.
[RMVX ACE] The case for 'Luck'
author=Aegix_Drakan
I find it useless, and in fact, it can be critically broken in some cases. I had a game in which status effects and debuffs almost universally had 100% success rates. Sadly, the luck stat mucked that up and sometimes, it would make a debuff fail for no reason when it was a 100% hit. >_<
For no reason? It's exactly what luck does, it modifies the chance for a status effect to land (unless the hit type is "Certain Hit", then luck has no effect). If the skill has 100% infliction chance, but the target has more luck than the attacker, then the luck difference will modify that chance to below 100%.
But yeah, luck is more often a problem than something useful for the game if you use Ace's default formula. It's even dumber than XP's dexterity.
[RMVX ACE] The case for 'Luck'
My most common use for luck is to rename and re-purpose it to dexterity.
One idea I've had is to make the stat more powerful. One effect would be that it modifies minimum or maximum random variance in damage up or down with one percentile point per point of difference of luck. Say you have five points of luck more than an enemy and standard attacks randomly deal 80%-120% damage. You will deal 85%-120% and the enemy 80%-115%. Not that much, but a 20 point of difference would matter quite a bit.
The other effect is to modify the accuracy of status attacks also with one percentile point up or down per point of difference in luck. It goes all the way down to zero, but is capped at doubled chance to land no matter the difference. This effect would apply last, after all resistances have been accounted for.
With that system, luck can not grow from 20 to 200 like other stats, it has to stay fairly static and only change when the player somehow invest in it.
One idea I've had is to make the stat more powerful. One effect would be that it modifies minimum or maximum random variance in damage up or down with one percentile point per point of difference of luck. Say you have five points of luck more than an enemy and standard attacks randomly deal 80%-120% damage. You will deal 85%-120% and the enemy 80%-115%. Not that much, but a 20 point of difference would matter quite a bit.
The other effect is to modify the accuracy of status attacks also with one percentile point up or down per point of difference in luck. It goes all the way down to zero, but is capped at doubled chance to land no matter the difference. This effect would apply last, after all resistances have been accounted for.
With that system, luck can not grow from 20 to 200 like other stats, it has to stay fairly static and only change when the player somehow invest in it.
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