SHORT GAMES VS LONGER GAMES

Sometimes. I don't play RPGs that I know to be short. I like games that will last me weeks, not a day or two.

When it comes to RPG Maker games, I'd rather much play a shorter game (around 3 - 8 hours) than a longer game (which I would assume, for RM, is 15 hours or more). However, it really depends on the quality of the game, but all in all, a compact and fun game would provide me with far more value than a long, plodding, and poorly paced game would.

Very few short games ever interest me, unfortunately. Even in the rm scene, I like going for games that are at least around 7 hours or more. I know there are a bunch of half hour projects here that have gotten some acclaim though, so who knows, maybe one day I'll try them.

I did like The Encephalon, now that I think about it.

Trying out shorter games is a lot easier for me. Basically the bar is lower. If I see a game that boasts "10 minutes of gameplay" I'm much more likely to give it a shot than a game that tells you awkwardly that it has 10 hours of gameplay.

Of course this is generally because of my bias that says "RM games generally are pretty bad and I don't want to waste more than an hour or two playing them".

If your game is any good at all, it is an absolute waste for it to be that short. Why would you spend so much time planning out and creating engaging mechanics and gameplay systems, and then not spend an extra couple days or weeks just to add some more length? It makes no sense. If the game is good people will want to play it as long as a commercial game. If it's not good then fix the gameplay before worrying about the length.

Making your game longer does not take that much extra time. The real time commitment is all in creating the core mechanics. The only people who think that adding more dungeons and cut scenes is the time consuming part are the ones who make no attempt to add unique and balanced and fun gameplay.

Uh, what? "If a game's gameplay is so great, then letting you actually have time to enjoy it is just compensating for the lack of good gameplay"? How does that even begin to make sense? I am seriously not following your train of logic.

Let's take an undeniably great game. Say, Super Mario World.

Now imagine that it ends after the first two levels.

Why in the flying clownhell would you end it after the first two levels? If the game is fun, I want to keep playing. FF7 would be way less awesome if escaping from Midgar were the end of the game. If Chrono Trigger ended as soon as you brought Marle back to life in 600 AD, it would be a piece of junk in comparison to what it is now. Seriously, how can you justify this?

I don't know what your definition of "filler" is, gameplay-wise. I've never heard of filler gameplay. I've heard of filler plot - dungeons that have nothing to do with the plot and thus slow the game's pace down to a crawl. That's obviously to be avoided if possible - you should create more actual plot, engage the player, not just make the Cave of Genericness three times as long. I guess filler gameplay would be if you had a new dungeon with new enemies that act exactly the same as the old enemies, but hopefully you're competent enough to make new content, not just string out what you've already got. Like I said in my earlier post, creating new content, whether that's new dungeons or new enemies or new cut scenes, is the easy part. If you don't think it's the easy part, you're not putting enough effort into the other parts.

author=Crimson_Legionnaire
Furthermore, you used a platformer game, a genre which prides itself on its gameplay more often than RM RPGs. I'm talking about RM RPGs, which are an entirely different beast.

I disagree with this point extremely strongly. Gameplay is no less important in one genre than another. In any RPG the combat is the heart and soul of the game. My point was that the gameplay is where the overwhelming majority of your effort, time, and thought should go into, and once you have done that, it seems silly not to spend a little time to create a longer plot. You used the term "on a whim", but to anyone really interested in making good gameplay, the entire plot, characters, setting, dungeons, and dialogue are a trivial amount of effort compared to the gameplay. That was my point from the beginning. I didn't mean to imply that the plot should be allowed to suffer - only that creating plot is the easy part.

Minigames are fucking horrible and 95% of them can die in a fire. You have won me over on this point, sir. If I have to catch butterflies or dodge lightning bolts one more time I will shoot myself. There is a reason that you can't make full games out of these concepts: they're not fun.

Battles are the meat of games that have them. Can't have a game without gameplay afterall. An epic story is great, but I can get that out of a book or movie. Something like Final Fantasy XIII gets mad props from me for battle system. I can get into that all day long. It's great.

Mini-games are something I'm split on. I don't care for them, however if they are in the game, I want them to be good enough to make me want to play. Blitzball and Triple Triad are good examples of mini-games I like to play. Those horrendous lightning dodging, butterfly catching, and jump-rope mini-games are examples of stupid, stupid ones.

I've seen a lot of people on various forums say that battles just get in the way of the story for them, which really makes little sense to me. If all you have is story, you'd be paying $40-60 (commercial games of course) for a 2-3 hour game.

I thought Bliz

author=LockeZ

author=Crimson_Legionnaire
Furthermore, you used a platformer game, a genre which prides itself on its gameplay more often than RM RPGs. I'm talking about RM RPGs, which are an entirely different beast.

I disagree with this point extremely strongly. Gameplay is no less important in one genre than another. In any RPG the combat is the heart and soul of the game. My point was that the gameplay is where the overwhelming majority of your effort, time, and thought should go into, and once you have done that, it seems silly not to spend a little time to create a longer plot. You used the term "on a whim", but to anyone really interested in making good gameplay, the entire plot, characters, setting, dungeons, and dialogue are a trivial amount of effort compared to the gameplay. That was my point from the beginning. I didn't mean to imply that the plot should be allowed to suffer - only that creating plot is the easy part.

Minigames are fucking horrible and 95% of them can die in a fire. You have won me over on this point, sir. If I have to catch butterflies or dodge lightning bolts one more time I will shoot myself. There is a reason that you can't make full games out of these concepts: they're not fun.

I can see you've been around the RM scene for a bit. How many RM RPGs pride themselves solely on story? Plenty. I may have misconstrued your point, or vice versa, but I'm not saying combat isn't the heart and soul of an RPG - far from it, actually. I was merely trying to make a point about RM RPGs.

However, what one looks for in an RPG and what they consider to be of the utmost importance is not for me to say. If you're looking for my personal opinion on the importance of gameplay > story or vice versa, sometimes I can be lenient on one or the other if one area is incredibly strong. Ultimately, I'd more or less slog through a mediocre story if the combat/gameplay is more than up-to-par than I would slog through utterly terrible gameplay just for a great story.

Heck, some people play just for the experience, and that's fine too.

Glad someone thinks catching butterflies is boring, though.

author=Fallen-Griever
"minigames" like Triple Triad and Blitzball probably got more playtime out of me than battles did in their respective titles, which kinda makes the battles the "minigame".

...Yeah. I really wish Triple Triad had been released as a standalone game so I didn't have to play FF8 to get to it.

author=Peaceful_Chaos
I've seen a lot of people on various forums say that battles just get in the way of the story for them, which really makes little sense to me. If all you have is story, you'd be paying $40-60 (commercial games of course) for a 2-3 hour game.

author=Crimson_Legionnaire
How many RM RPGs pride themselves solely on story? Plenty.

It's a pretty big problem. A lot of amateur RPG designers actually seem to hate RPGs and only make them because they are stuck in a time warp to the year 1998 where RPGs are the only type of games with a story. They often have no idea what they are doing with the creation of tactics and balance and challenge. Really, what they ought to do is direct a fantasy movie, not create an RPG.

I admit I was partially in this boat for about my first one and a half games. I didn't dislike RPGs, I just had no idea how to make good ones.