THINGS I'VE LEARNED

author=Ramshackin
If 4 characters can battle at a time, only 4 characters will be used
This comes in two flavors: large number of characters to recruit to the 4 man party, or large party of freely swappable characters, where only 4 can battle at a time. Having not finished a game of the second type, I'll use Edifice as my example. My party always consisted of the same characters. Craze must have known this when making the game, because there are battles that force you to use a random party.

This problem compounds when unused characters don't receive updated equipment or battle experience. I thought I could be clever by making side quests that required a certain character. It just meant I spent time on content that will never be played.

How I handle this situation varies a lot from game to game. In some games I switch parties a lot while in others I stick to one set of characters. It does however help a lot if inactive members receive experience and equipment can easily be swapped.

I find it troublesome when I see people post solutions where they try to force the player into swapping characters. Swapping characters is only fun when it's encouraged, not when it's forced. If you force the player, you have character swapping for the sake of swapping characters, it's no longer contributing to fun. That said, I could get behind the idea of forcing the player early on just to get her/him used to using different parties and then make it optional the remaining 90% of the game.

Enemies should be more than bags of HP
Enemies never did anything interesting in my early games. No threat. Nothing to react to. The challenge was how fast you can kill them.

Isn't this well known already? I think the problem it actually doing this rather than knowing this has to be done in the first place.

Don't wait until level 20 to introduce the interesting mechanics
This is the recurring theme of my games. The interesting skills, original mechanics, and character building come later in the game. I always have this need to ease players into the game by starting off with the generic RPG systems. Player's interest is gone by the time the game gets good.

There is nothing wrong with easing the player into the game, but I have noticed a lot of RPGs takes that idea to a ridiculous level. You need one dungeon, maybe two if the first dungeon is a mini dungeon, at most to ease the player into the game. If you have multiple new mechanics, you can introduce them one at a time and use one dungeon for each new mechanic to ease the player into it. Anything more is overkill.

That said, I've noticed, thanks to the Let's Try videos, that some player get confused as soon as the game turns slightly more complicated than + and -. You're going to have a hard time making your battles appealing to both them and players with actual comprehension skills.

Repeatedly failing to apply a condition due to chance is frustrating
Especially when there is no indication that the boss was just straight up immune.

I don't get why so many insist on giving status effect a failure chance on cannon fodder enemies. I have no problem with skills failing when it makes sense, like skeletons being immune to poison. However, when a sleep spell randomly fails against a cannon fodder bat, that's a clear "status effects are not actually meant to be used" signal to me.

author=Cernus

author=Ramshackin
Any insight into how to make an open game, without the player feeling lost? I've never felt lost in an Elder Scrolls or Fallout game.

I was actually trying to come up with a way to create maze-like dungeons recently (although I never got round to doing anything with it).

As established, the problem with having maze-like dungeons is that if they contain treasure chests then the player feels compelled to explore every single path in the area, which can be boring, and what you really want is to give the player an incentive to find the exit as efficiently as possible. Having randomised treasure and being able to replay dungeons would solve the problem of feeling that you are missing out if you don't explore everywhere but then there needs to be something else about the dungeon that gives the player an incentive to find the exit as quickly as possible.

A few possibilities could be having a monster in the maze that is pursuing the hero, or maybe the dungeon is slowly sinking? Or even have a mechanic where the player is given treasure proportional to how quickly they found the exit.

I think Spelunky actually has something like this. The one-hit kill ghost will appear if you take too long to find the exit of a level, which discourages loitering about to find every last bit of treasure generated on a floor.

--

Btw, I'm glad I've already taken a lot of the original suggestions to heart with my own game! :D

@Ramshackin Yeah. Both of these games are filled with content throughout the world. Mostly the open-world genre fails because there simply isn't enough choices of things to do to justify the open-world concept. Like Ratty said, most of the quests themselves are linear, it's only the order in which you can do them that is almost completely up to you. The model of the game is catered towards open world exploration, but eliminating needless backtracking. Like Ratty said, the fast-travelling features and quest-pointing features give you a sense of direction.

In games like Fable, Elder Scrolls and Fallout, you can select your quest and they will point you in the direction you need to go, so it is visible at all times. I believe that without this direction, people would not be as engaged, because navigating the world would be a pain in the pooper.

True. Different strokes for different folks, I guess.

Oh God, the bags of HP... so many...bags of HP. I feel this way after playing Xenoblade Chronicles. Like, I'm at lv.28, the monster is at lv.28, why is it taking 5 minutes to kill it even with the Monado!!!

Anyway, great compilation of info. I'll make sure to read it all thoroughly tomorrow.

Crystalgate
I find it troublesome when I see people post solutions where they try to force the player into swapping characters. Swapping characters is only fun when it's encouraged, not when it's forced. If you force the player, you have character swapping for the sake of swapping characters, it's no longer contributing to fun. That said, I could get behind the idea of forcing the player early on just to get her/him used to using different parties and then make it optional the remaining 90% of the game.

Do you mean this for all RPGs ever, or just for the traditional epic fantasy? Because for the traditional epic fantasy, I agree. When I want to force people into switching their party (with something like the partner XP or fatigue) it's because I design more meta, gamey games. I am forcing swaps for a purpose -- to spice up the gameplay and mix up falling into a routine. My plans also tend to be for short games meant to have lots of replayability.

Do they ever get released? No, but that's besides the point...

I don't care how advantageous swapping characters is, I will never play a character whose personality/story I dislike or don't care about unless the game forces me to. I will always use a party of the characters I like, whether it's optimal or not.

If I don't like the characters I'm playing as, I don't like the game.

That's what I mean. In a lot of games (most modern RPGs, in fact), the dialogue you get is based on who you have in your party, both in-battle and out-of-battle. There were several characters in Persona 3+4 I never once put in my party (namely, Ken, Akamaru, and Teddie) because I couldn't stand them.

Your response to Craze doesn't make sense. The battles obviously aren't lacking in variety if you're switching characters. Changing the battle situation is the very definition of variety, and 50% of the battle situation is on the player side. You want variety, but you think that adding more variety to battles will help very little in that regard?

If a designer gives you an archer character, or an earth-elemental spell, or a crit-avoiding talent, or an accessory that grants immunity to paralysis, and you for some reason decide against using it, how is forcing you to do so going to make you enjoy the game more? Well, that's easy to answer. Figuring out how to win is enjoyable. If the solution is always whatever you were going to do anyway, victory after victory starts to feel flat. It's highly enjoyable to figure out how to overcome a variety of different situations and prove your total mastery over the game.

The dilemma of meaningful strategy vs. player freedom is something I don't have anything even remotely resembling an answer for, though. You have to give the player options, but many of those options have to not work sometimes, or the player can't ever lose. That's what losing is in an RPG - picking the wrong strategy. There's a balance you have to strike between how many strategies should work and how many shouldn't work, and I think the exact point where it's most enjoyable is probably different for different players.

author=LockeZ
Your response to Craze doesn't make sense. The battles obviously aren't lacking in variety if you're switching characters. Changing the battle situation is the very definition of variety, and 50% of the battle situation is on the player side. You want variety, but you think that adding more variety to battles will help very little in that regard?

Technically you're introducing variety if you switch characters, but the same can be said about fighting three imps instead of three dire-wolves. This does not mean that the variety is meaningful. For example, if I toss out an axeman who spams Cleave 90% of the battles and replace him with an archer who instead spams Power Shot 90% of the battles, it does not constitute variety in any meaningful way.

My observation from various video games is following; unless the game is such that fighting different line-ups of enemies results into a meaningful change of tactics (which is what I view as meaningful variety), changing the characters you use will not result into a meaningful change of tactics either.

Basically, changing characters can add variety to a game that already has variety prior to using that feature, but it cannot meaningfully introduce variety to a game that lack variety in the first place. At least I haven't seen it done.

author=LockeZ
If a designer gives you an archer character, or an earth-elemental spell, or a crit-avoiding talent, or an accessory that grants immunity to paralysis, and you for some reason decide against using it, how is forcing you to do so going to make you enjoy the game more? Well, that's easy to answer. Figuring out how to win is enjoyable. If the solution is always whatever you were going to do anyway, victory after victory starts to feel flat. It's highly enjoyable to figure out how to overcome a variety of different situations and prove your total mastery over the game.

Generally speaking, the more you absolutely have to use something, the less figuring out there is. For example, a boss that uses a multi-target paralysis move would force me to use an anti paralysis accessory. However, figuring out that I have to use that accessory is now so trivial that doing so grants no satisfaction and barely even qualifies as figuring out.

A better approach IMO is if a certain battle had say ten options (a skill, a character, an accessory, whatever) that are more useful for that particular battle than the majority of other battles and the less of those option I make use of, the harder the battle is. If I use none of those option, the battle will be impossible. The minimum number of option needed to make a victory possible depends on how skilled I am. I have to at some extent adapt my strategy, but there is still no single option that I absolutely have to make use of.

author=Craze
Crystalgate, I'm gonna try not to be minorly offended by you assuming that my battles are gonna be boring :<

I interpreted the "mix up falling into a routine" part as meaning if you don't enforce character switching, the player will fall into routine and I in turn interpreted that as meaning the player will use the same tactic over and over. On a second thought, I realized this is not necessarily what you meant. If you didn't mean that, then I apologize.