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DFalcon
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Software engineer and amateur game developer with a focus on challenging non-twitch gameplay. I set the bar for "challenging" pretty high.
Other major chunks of interest go toward reading, math and tabletop games of many stripes.
Other major chunks of interest go toward reading, math and tabletop games of many stripes.
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man i suck. is there a free way to unzip RAR files so i can play games?
7-zip is completely free and does RARs.
HP Recovery... after every battle? MADNESS! (Resource Management)
I actually wrote a follow-up to the roundtable on easy after-battle healing, but the gist is basically: if you're going to do it, go for fewer/harder battles and make sure people get the opportunity to save before getting into one.
Done that way it can be pretty good; I'm all for reducing the number of trash fights in a game.
Done that way it can be pretty good; I'm all for reducing the number of trash fights in a game.
Lay Bare Your Numbers
post=153956
Fair enough, but telling me that I can "recall memories" is one of the vaguest things I've ever heard. I'm glad it says I'm heroic though, that's pretty sweet.
Doesn't a player at that point already know the main character has total amnesia? I'm not arguing what matters most is obvious, but at least qualitatively it seems clear enough what "recall memories" will be doing.
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To get back to Craze - it's more important for me to be able to access numbers than always see numbers, but that just means it's a UI decision rather than a gameplay-design decision. Sounds like you could probably organize it sensibly so people get the idea pretty quickly what increasing each attribute does.
So mostly I think you may be over-abbreviating your statistics a little. ATK and DEF can be a good solid base, but someone weighing the benefits of the S-CDMG, W-PEN sword versus the H-ITK staff may take pause. It'd be helpful and hopefully wouldn't take up too much space to recast these as, say, "Spell critical damage +5", "Ignore 30% physical defense", etc.
Full control and non-control
I found DQIV Chapter 5 absolutely maddening - probably even more so because you spend the first four chapters actually controlling the other characters, so I remembered a time before they'd become over-random drooling idiots in battle. Never got very far into it.
I think a certain amount of predictability is essential if you want to go for non-control in a big way. Gambits are one promising solution. Dominions 3 (a wargame) lets you lay out a formation and strategy for battles but has them automatically play out. Since the OP mentioned Ogre Battle, in that you know what ability a unit is going to use and how many times.
Another way to achieve that is to make the uncontrollable parts merely handy, not essential, like I tend to find Fallout allies. (Though not wanting them to die can be a bit of a pain.)
I think a certain amount of predictability is essential if you want to go for non-control in a big way. Gambits are one promising solution. Dominions 3 (a wargame) lets you lay out a formation and strategy for battles but has them automatically play out. Since the OP mentioned Ogre Battle, in that you know what ability a unit is going to use and how many times.
Another way to achieve that is to make the uncontrollable parts merely handy, not essential, like I tend to find Fallout allies. (Though not wanting them to die can be a bit of a pain.)
Multiple love interests in a serious rpg... Does it work?
post=147612
Is it the challenge of adapting dialogue with too much love interests so great?
I haven't tried it in this case specifically, but regular multiplication of dialogue paths really can suck up developer time and effort - it's something to be a little careful of, though not automatically against.
Update ( 6/23/2010 ) - It's been six months since this two-week game was started.
Reveal your secrets: where did you get your ideas?
The MC dies! Game Over.
I don't think this is only feasible in tactical RPGs. Valkyrie Profile did well with a system like FFT's - if Valkyrie died you needed to revive her or win the battle within a couple turns. (Not that, in that case, it was much of a restriction on strategy - it was mostly just an interesting touch.)
Of course, I did it straight up in Aurora Wing and have no regrets! Losing anybody who's plot-mandatory was a game over even if the player had the resources to rescue them from end-of-battle permadeath. It kept things much simpler to code and explain, and most of those characters weren't the sort you were going to lose just because of one bad turn.
Of course, I did it straight up in Aurora Wing and have no regrets! Losing anybody who's plot-mandatory was a game over even if the player had the resources to rescue them from end-of-battle permadeath. It kept things much simpler to code and explain, and most of those characters weren't the sort you were going to lose just because of one bad turn.
Game Pet Peeves
post=141873
Would you consider an optional character that joins the party with a blatant disclaimer that they are superior to everyone else and basically an Easy Mode/gameplay skip option to lower the difficulty of the game? Just curious.
This is a curious middle case.
Normally there's a definite mental division between two tasks: deciding which game you're playing, and playing that game. (Part of what's called the magic circle in some places - the inside/outside game divider.) So you can choose Easy mode, or not to buy any items, or to play with only Samurai starting at Dorter, or whatever. And even once you start the actual game you may have some options that you can segregate out as not being part of the game - a menu option labeled "Difficulty Mode", or whether or not to go to GameFAQs.
But when you're playing the game you're looking for the best, easiest way to beat the game, even if that's something totally uninteresting like "Choose Attack 50 times" or "Push W then I then N". And the more complicated an option is and the less foreknowledge you have about it, the harder it is to pull yourself out of playing the game to decide that you want to exclude it from the game you want to play, instead of just taking advantage of it.
So if it were a blatant disclaimer, and I had some warning, the situation you describe would still be pretty tempting. Especially if I had to do anything to get that character, making them a reward in some way, or if they have cool special attacks, or dialogue anywhere... But rather than just showing a warning, putting the choice as clearly outside the magic circle as possible might be somewhat more effective.
"You now have the option to use T.G. Cid! To do so, go to the team menu, move the cursor to him, and select 'I would like to enter Easy Mode, please!'."
Craze's Dirty Little Secret
Lying to the player is definitely bad. Vagueness, not necessarily so bad.
Thinking on the question, I'm mostly struck by the number of times I've seen a Luck stat in RPGs described no better than "This might do good things for you, sometimes!" So I guess if you're explicit in the difficulty levels that you're lying about unspecified things, I'm not really inclined to react with outrage... though that's separate from believing it'll necessarily be effective.
I wouldn't want a DM of mine to fudge battle rolls on the spot, generally. What I do count on is them opening up, for example, possibilities of something less than total party failure if things do start to go badly.
Thinking on the question, I'm mostly struck by the number of times I've seen a Luck stat in RPGs described no better than "This might do good things for you, sometimes!" So I guess if you're explicit in the difficulty levels that you're lying about unspecified things, I'm not really inclined to react with outrage... though that's separate from believing it'll necessarily be effective.
I wouldn't want a DM of mine to fudge battle rolls on the spot, generally. What I do count on is them opening up, for example, possibilities of something less than total party failure if things do start to go badly.
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