PLEASE HELP ME SOLVE A MYSTERY!

author=Raoul589
I invoke Crocker's Rules.

First, I wish to say that I do not intend this post as a cheap way to plug my game. If you don't believe me on this, we won't be able to communicate effectively from here on, so there's probably not much point in you reading on.

I was looking back at how my (completed) game was doing recently, and I decided to filter my game in various ways to see how it had gone down with the RPG Maker community, overall (I released it about 9 months ago).

It turns out, it's not doing very well. In terms of downloads, it ranks:

• 430th / 810 (below average) for the filter 'All completed games'

• 119th / 140 (bottom 20%) for the filter 'Completed games rated 4 or more'

• 20th / 21 (second last!) for the filter 'Completed VX games rated 4 or more'

Now, obviously I think that my game is in about the top 10% in terms of quality (as everyone does).

As stated on the definition page, Crocker's Rules cannot be imposed. They're a self-inflicted phenomenon that the poster either agrees to or they don't.

Also, everyone thinks they're in the top 10%. Including me. Only, I know better, and know that quality is real work, not talent. For every new feature, I've had to go back and bugtest, since usually that massive battle system or sidequest doesn't work without a hitch.

I looked at your game. It didn't seem bad, it wasn't exactly good, it was just horribly horribly... average. Picture 1 has someone wandering through a forest, not exactly a sucky drawn forest but there's no eyecatch at all. Second is item usage, which while not horribly bad names, just seems flat (You can, btw, have funny/anecdotal bits for the description of items, such as for Jester's Sword "remember that time you killed that jester? ...Well, here's his sword"). Third, is a dungeon, nothing really inspiring about it (it's not scary (most horror), not silly (Earthbound/Mother3), etc). And finally, you have a metering system, that while it looks good, there's just a bunch of random scorpions wandering about a desert. The other two not pictured are a thief or whatever saying "I've got you now" and a timed dragon boss battle.

While we're on shameless self-pimping, here's my game, or rather just look at the images. And this is with my sucky map skills, the graphics detail is in your favor (since 2003 generally can't produce the same color resolution), but yours is bland. No, not that everyone should copy my style. You need to work on finding your own style (it may be funny/serious/dark/strange/etc I dunno), and coming up with something not so generic.

So I read two or three pages of people saying essentially that. Your game is not highly average and boring, it's incredibly boring and average. If there was a scale from one to ten, it would be 5.0 repeating for a million decimals. If you think it's awesome, you have to show us it's awesome (and get rid of all these lackluster pictures for a bunch of new ones). If you're into the whole Zen/Tao thing and trying to be average and boring, be satisfied with being average and boring.

I came to the conclusion Raoul was just fishing for compliments when he asked people to give opinions on his game, so I was bent on playing his game just to review it and give it a crappy score, because the review score of 4 was a sham.

I've finally played Raoul's game and so far I think the gameplay is top notch. I know right.

That game's presentation does no justice at all for his game. I was spot on when I said he needed better windows afterall. Give the game a shot guys, it starts bland but the gameplay is kinda exciting.

author=Shoobinator
In Raoul's defense, while the presentation may not be top-notch, you can't assume that the game is boring to play IF you haven't actually played it yet. I think that's also what he was trying to argue. But of course presentation matters for people to want to play etc. etc. I just wouldn't immediately conclude that it actually IS boring, but I could THINK that it is from a glance.

Well, anybody can assume whatever they want to; whether or not it's true is a completely different matter. However, if people feel the screenshots are boring, and the presentation is not up to snuff, they're likely going to think this is what the game will be like, and decide against downloading it for themselves.

In other words, people will make their own assumptions, and it's up to the developer to prove otherwise, if they feel the need is warranted.

That said, I don't think the screenshots are that bad, and I may be inclined to play it at some point, but I have a current backlog of about 200 games I'm still trying to go through. However, I'm also the kind of person that doesn't mind playing an RTP game (if the RTP is used right); I place more importance over writing, game mechanics, and level design than I do what sort of resources were used.

However, I also realize I'm in the minority, since it seems a lot of RM users are against the RTP, no matter how it's used.