PEOPLE TRYING TO PUT TOO MUCH IN THERE GAMES.... LEADING TO AN UNFINISHED PROJECT!

author=Blindmind
I'm a bit confused what the original post refers to? Game content? Effort?

I read this as "too many features/systems". Like, a cooking system and a crafting system and an open world horse-taming system. Not that people are working too hard or too long on their games but that they totally lose focus on what their games are at their core.

Like sooz said, "feature creep". You start with wanting to give the player cool swords, then decide to give them the ability to craft cool swords so you put in veins of magical ore, then you need a crafting system, which requires a new GUI for said system, which means you need new menu graphics, and since you have new menu graphics you decide they can craft potions as well, and... so on and so forth until you're spending 90% of your time working on features and 10% of your time working on the story/actual gameplay/core mechanics.

It's not even that these games are long; my game is getting pretty long, but I'm making a point of only using RM2k3's database and Dyn plugins without doing any elaborate eventing/coding/whatever so I don't spend all my time on superfluous junk.

I can speak from experience when I say that avoiding feature creep becomes more and more difficult the longer a project becomes, though. I need to keep pushing boundaries in whatever way I feel I can repeat consistently just to keep the gameplay from getting stale and repetitive. Could I cut the length of my game down? Of course? Will I? NEVER.

Yeah I think it's important to distinguish "Feature Creep" from "Polish" or even "Stretching" the game. Because you have a basic RPG still be a huge undertaking if you want it to be epic or just well made.

author=Kaempher
Not that people are working too hard or too long on their games but that they totally lose focus on what their games are at their core.

The weird thing is that RPGs by their nature kind of don't have a specific core when a bare necessities RPG typically has 3-4 systems in place Combat, Exploring, Cutscenes, Menus/Resource Management etc.. If you were to say what your RPG is "about" most would answer the plot synopsis or something. A platformer with a gimmick could safely say "My game is about time travel jumping" and it'd be easy to sniff out what's most important to the game and what to ultimately cut. But RPGs by their nature just seem to invite "feature creep" because commercial ones just did it all the time.

I think about this a lot when playing Radiant Historia. How it has a neat two timeline gimmick (that doesn't quite make sense if you think hard about it but whatever) that makes for some unique virtual story telling but... the battles have little to do with that mechanic. Yes they resolve the conflicts in the story but there's no weird timeline condition that affects the battles at all. Not that it's a flaw or anything but it's obvious that they started with the idea of doing an RPG first and fitting a gimmick on top of it rather than along with it.

In 2009 I complained about Silviera's scope creep in this article of the SNEWS.

I am still complaining about it to this very day.

Does Silviera still exist? I mean he was Soli all along anyway but yeah

I never had much trouble with feature creep, but then again, I don't often bother with weird mechanics or gimmicks. Even in commercial games, I often ignore them or shy away 'cuz they're just frills.

author=Darken
The weird thing is that RPGs by their nature kind of don't have a specific core when a bare necessities RPG typically has 3-4 systems in place Combat, Exploring, Cutscenes, Menus/Resource Management etc.. If you were to say what your RPG is "about" most would answer the plot synopsis or something.

I feel like this just drives home how important the narrative is in the RPG package, and how that specifically should inform the mechanics. A devotion to keeping the narrative simple can prevent feature creep, since adding extraneous features would distract from the important bits of the story.

Honestly, whatever angle you look at it from, the basic idea is to have a plan and ruthlessly stick to it. Got some cool ideas? Excellent, keep them on the backburner for the next project. But you reeeeaaaallly wanna use them? All the more reason to work hard on finishing the current project!

@Darken:
You're def right about RPGs don't really have a 'core mechanic', and it is probably why feature creep is so prevalent in them (among other reasons of course, ie wanting to replicate cool things you've seen).

Although a lot of people list 'narrative' as the primary focus on RPGs, that's never been a draw for me. I like games that feature a lot of exploring with the narrative only serving as an interesting reason for more exploring. I like my exploration rewarded with cool swords, so treasure chests with cool swords in them keep me happy while I poke around and get mobbed with random battles.

I really like SNES RPGs, and it's not just because of my extra thicc nostalgia goggles. A lot of modern RPGs have huge, overwrought stories with tonnes of cutscenes and endless dialogue, which for me is just getting in the way of the game. A simple, clever story told well is better than an epic told poorly any day. If you stretch that enjoyable story out over the skeleton of an RPG I will probably enjoy playing it.

One RPG that definitely had a core mechanic was FF5- the fighting system was very enjoyable (for me, anywho) and the narrative served as a way of giving you expansions to that fighting system. It's a rarity, though, and most games are all over the place.

I do really like minigames (especially fishing minigames) though so like... maybe I'll add one? Oh no it's happening

author=Darken
@Sooz: I mean in that case you'd really have to justify why having a ton of resource draining battles in your story is like... important to the story. In movies in books we wouldn't want a fight scene that adds nothing to advance the plot but I guess most concede that in an RPG "traveling through the dangerous forest filled with monsters in order to get to important event x" is considered a plot point.

Games and movies/books have different kinds of narratives. A movie or a book would make a shitty game, and if you're trying to make a game using movie or book rules, you're going to make a shitty game.

Ideally, your narrative and your gameplay should go hand in hand. Normally, they do, you just don't think about it because it's done well enough that it doesn't stick out.

author=Kaempfer
One RPG that definitely had a core mechanic was FF5- the fighting system was very enjoyable (for me, anywho) and the narrative served as a way of giving you expansions to that fighting system. It's a rarity, though, and most games are all over the place.

FF5's narrative never acknowledges the job system that directly other than the heroes get these remaining shards each time they're late for the crystal and magically they decide to don costumes and generate skills. It does a really good job sidestepping the fact that, yeah Butz is just gonna be the freelancer sprite in the overworld deal with it. The two things don't quite interrupt each other besides that.

A funny way to steer FF5's story into its own job gimmick would be to make the game about being unemployed and your task is to travel a fantasy world finding the one true job that suits you and you gaining all these different jobs to try out and resolve conflicts with them. Because like yeah how the fuck is being a black mage a job exactly? I know it's a loose final fantasy term but you know, the actual job Butz and his party possess are like freelancers or "world saviors" even that's not apt because they're not getting paid for this. Yeah they get gil from the monsters but I guess that makes them self employed monster slayers (except for the Samurai).

Whatever it's semantics, but I guess my point is if you made the story theme about this idea that like, having a variety of skills can help you survive in a dark capitalist world or whatever and have FF5's system match that with yeah the point of the game is to mix and match different professions for success. Then you have something more cohesive for what its worth.