STANDARDS

post=118913
Well mostly the part MegaMan games should be made like any MegaMan game. ;D

People should think outside the box a little more, fan games are no exception... Hell; even mainstream developers do it sometimes.

Remember Mega Man Legends? It put a new spin on things by making Mega Man an Action RPG.

STANDARDS RULE OKAY

post=119073

post=118922

post=118913
Well mostly the part MegaMan games should be made like any MegaMan game. ;D

People should think outside the box a little more...

... And not make a fan game. That is, if they want to think outside the box.

It's not that cut and dry. At all, really.

No I mean, I disagree with what you're saying. You can make a fan game that's outside of the box.

I'm saying it's a homage to the Mother style, you goon. It was a complement!

My standards generally, for myself, are pretty high. Little things bother me for some reason, and I can be picky with the way something comes out in one of my projects. For others, though, standards are not as high. I don't mind seeing games chock-full of RTP or cliches, but I generally won't bother playing it. First impressions make a difference, y'know. I always like seeing a game that's unique and looks like a lot of effort was put into it, though, because that's part of what drives me.

I hold myself up to high standards. They're not always realistic, but that's kind of the point. They don't serve to evaluate my ability at any given time (though that's a plus) so much as to help me improve.

Given: If I'm at a certain skill level before tackling a project and I aim to create something at a much higher skill level then the result will most likely be something in between.

Hypothesis: If I hold myself to high standards, that "something in between" will be greater than if I had expected less of myself. That's the general idea, anyway.

I have pretty high expectations of others too. However, outside of friends and some other colleagues, it's pretty rare that I will give a big enough shit about their work to really flesh out a good critique when asked for feedback. Unless it's a genuinely good effort, in which case I get a little excited and motivated to engage them about their work as if the energy they spent making it magically juices me up. On the other hand, if it doesn't seem like they really worked at it, I get bored and/or crabby that they're wasting my time with it and will probably just comment from what I see as a more relaxed, general set of standards with the aim of shutting them up.

It sounds jerky I know, but it just comes from a few years of attending an art school full of semi-retarded asslings who, instead of spending their time practicing their fundamentals, wasted it coming up with excuses for their half-assery of something they're supposed to be really passionate about. /shrug

post=120669
Another thing is pacing. It is my belief that every game has to start of as the easiest thing ever. You have to let people figure out how to play the game before you start hammering nails into their face. I love games that become a challenge to beat, not come out of the gate like that.

I figured this out the hard way.

Good questions, good discussions.

I like Stress' post:

post=124417
I have very low standards as I currently would just like to finish ANY RPG Maker project before I die.

That's a tough dilemma to figure out. 'Cause... well, if your standards are too high, you'll have trouble actually finishing things. If they are too low, you may actually get to finish something, but who's gonna care about it anyway?

I've been having trouble with this, because my standards increase dramatically over the course of my project. For instance, I started using chipsets from other places, then I got to editing them, after that I made chipsets from template just importing pieces from other chips and editing them, and now I'm actually making my tiles (and I'm talking about the same project). I'm satisfied with what I've been achieving, but I catch myself sometimes wasting hours to draw a 3-TILE WALL, and it's very frustrating.

There's got to be a balance between having a high standard and being practical. Sometimes high standards are not realistic, because your players won't really care about some details. But then again, you might as well do nothing instead of working on crappy games (or poorly developped projects).

My standards are high, but not too high for other people's games. Overused graphics, bad mapping, bad dialogues, plot cliches, dull battle systems, all huge turn-offs. Like someone else said, I expect something at least slightly original and refreshing when I play someone else's game. I mean, if I'm going to play a traditional-styled game, I might as well play a commercial one, so I always look for something unique in amateur games... and it's really hard to find.