SHADOWTEXT'S PROFILE

Every weekday. They're rarely significant updates, but there's always something.

In Ocarina, Shiek was consistently referred to with male pronouns. In SSBM, they seemed to use the female pronoun.

I am unsure what to make of that, personally!

NEW TOPIC OF DISCUSSION: Is Shiek a reverse trap or a DOUBLE TRAP?

author=DFalcon link=topic=58.msg993#msg993 date=1182565160
In an RPG, game over is synonymous with "reload from last save", so maybe there's something here I'm missing? Is that part to be taken in combination with, say, scarcity of save points? There's a difference between losing a battle in most games and plain arbitrariness like The Way's Caves of Instant Death.

I just prefer it when they automatically take you back to that save point, or better yet, take you to an arbitrary respawn point like the beginning of the dungeon or something. Bonus points if I keep all my items (except ones taken from the battle I had been in and lost, maybe). Because nothing makes me stop playing a game faster, even a good one, than realizing that I've just lost three hours because I forgot to save before a surprisingly powerful boss.

author=Sovan Jedi link=topic=58.msg953#msg953 date=1182522306
How does this apply to RPG Maker games? Rather a lot, actually. While RM** games have the added bonus of not needing to worry about too many frontend menus and loading times, several elements in the design of the game can interfere with the playtime. Slow walk speeds, slow stop-start menu screens and backtracking to find that save point so you can save and quit the game make the game drag on and feel too long no matter how lengthy the game itself takes to play. If all of this was fixed then I would have no qualms about games boasting big playtimes.

So the quick conclusion to this rather wordy chinwag is, it's not so much how long it is but what they do with the time that's important, and if it's wasted on a poorly-designed inner system then I have no time for that.

I have long felt, and your response only reassures me about this belief, that all games should have at the very least a "Suspend Play At Any Point Save," that would let the player stop whenever he needs to and start back at exactly the same place, even if loading it were to immediately delete that save. I first really noticed the strength of the concept with Harvest Moon: Friends of Mineral Town, which I've still played more than just about any other game, but Pokémon has exactly the same advantage (and even more so with the easy Suspend mode that shutting the DS brings) so it's a great example. Of course these don't use Suspend Saves so much as just letting you save anywhere to begin with, but the effect is basically the same. Except, in Pokemon, mid-battle. But you can use the DS sleep mode there, so it still works out.

It also makes me hesitant of any sort of Game Over system, as well as load times and anything else that makes the experience less streamlined. Plenty of people are going to disagree with me, especially on the "No Gameover" part, but I've often felt like Game Overs are just an easy (read: lazy) way of adding superficial challenge to a game.

But yeah. Make everything quick and streamlined, and easy to start or stop at any time, and people will have much less issue with playing a lot of it. It works better on portable consoles than it does on PC, but there's a bit of carry over even there.

...of course with amateur games, part of the problem lies in making people want to keep playing in the first place.

Oh, and xkcd. Nerd humor at its finest.