DFALCON'S PROFILE

Switching gears for a bit, I decided to update a Flash game I did awhile back to post on RMN. Didn't take long.

I have to agree with the choice of Fallout as an example here. For a long time you're basically just exploring the wasteland and doing stuff without obvious relevance to your objective, but:

-you're never without that fallback objective, and
-you always have a fairly direct way of finding someplace else interesting.

Just being told "this is a world, here you go" isn't very motivating.

I once wrote a Python script for reading switch and variable values from an RM2K(3) save file, for fairly little reason. On the off chance that this might be useful to someone, it's in my locker: http://rpgmaker.net/users/DFalcon/locker/rmsavereader.py

Maybe this changed in XP/VX, but isn't basic RM* attack/physical skill damage all still something times (Attacker ATK - (Defender DEF)/2)? One would think a DEF value on a boss more than twice as high as all but one character's ATK could be a problem... and likewise, ATK values on monsters less than half any PC's DEF are pretty pointless.

Regardless, I don't think I've ever seen an actual stat system where blindly multiplying values like this makes for effective enemy balance.

post=135602
Honestly, I think it's best to just release different versions of your game. That way, you can customize more stuff, like HP and whatnot.

To back up a bit, this is a bad idea because of a well-understood design principle known as "single point of control". Anytime you unnecessarily copy something you greatly increase the effort needed to update it and the error rate of doing so. Even a "finished" game typically needs bugfixes and updates for some time, so this is an easy way to make lots of work for yourself and screw it up worse in one stroke.


The ease of implementing difficulty levels depends on what exactly you want to do. I'm sure everybody could find a way to include more consumables in treasure chests in an Easy game.

post=135546
I would feel the need to fight every fight in the game on every difficulty level because I am kind of a perfectionist. (There is one fight on the Hard mode of the original Iron Gaia that I never got around to testing in actual game conditions and it haunts me to this day. Did anyone ever beat it? Was it even beatable? Was it too easy? I have no idea.)

One of the things I accepted with Aurora Wing is that I had to leave the judgment of the appropriateness of other difficulty levels to others! On the other hand, I was testing on Hard and knew the constant stat adjustments I was putting in for difficulty levels shouldn't be too horribly gamebreaking, at least for Normal mode. Gripping hand, I probably would have wanted to be much more careful had I been adjusting enemy strength upward - nobody likes "Oh, same battle as Normal, only it takes twice as long because the boss has 150% HP and defense!"