TOWN-DUNGEON-TOWN(THE EVER EXHAUSTING FORMULA)

Yeah it's called balance, Legend of Zelda lets you go out and collect heart pieces or w/e if you get tired of dungeon crawling. Chinese food is great but if you ate it every meal, every fucking day, 24/7, you'd get sick of it. No matter how good something is it's nice to have variety to keep it fresh.

Or maybe have new sections of town open up after each dungeon. But then that's also like saying town > dungeon > new part of town > dungeon

author=Craze
Personally, I only play games in 30-60 minute bursts anyway; even playing Skyrim last weekend, I'd play for a bit, go out to brunch with some friends, play some more, go watch some Modern Family, play some more, and so on. Skyrim has delicious towns, so it's not the best example, but the overall point I'm trying to make is this: a person doesn't need to be able to live in a videogame. I see nothing wrong with needing to take a break from a game for an hour or evening or however long due to its energy. Why should a game need to sustain the rise and lull for six-hour stretches? If a game about constantly being on the run and never catching a break (http://youtu.be/U5jNWYHa9s8) fatigues you, isn't that impressive in some way?

The issue with applying this across the board is that it only caters to one specific, subjective playstyle. Your approach to gaming is what mines was when I was in college and had the time to sojourn (which I envy, man, soak that shit up!), but you know my present occupation; I am busy like, all the time, and I lather up opportunities to sit back and play a game with nobody bothering me for like, hours. Me, it infuriates me to sit down and play a game and be interrupted 20 minutes later by; work/sudden drills/some asshole/the need to sleep. So for me, vegging out with a game is one of the only pleasures in solitude I have for the time being.

With that being said, my issue with FFXIII isn't maybe that there's....too much action. It's that it seemed to be an experiment that was missing a leg. It's like...'Let's take away towns', but like, 'let's forget to put in the other stuff that makes an action assault style RPG fun'.

The character customization, the Crystarium, sucked a bag of assholes. The pacing was pretty bad, forcing the player to use very specific characters until halfway through the game (eliminating the fun of 'mixingmatching' characters and playstyles), and the item creation system was like, fucked up. They also tried to emulate FFXII's Mark system, but if someone tries to tell me that FFXIII's system on hunting monsters was better than FXII, I guess you're on crack.

My point being, it's almost like give and take. If you're going to take something, you have to give something back.

I've been wondering where Extra Credit went from the Escapist. Oh... Penny Arcade... eh.

author=murray
Chrono Trigger also tried to break the formula by not restricting NPC interaction to the towns. Several of Chrono Trigger's dungeons had NPC interactions, whether it was with human NPCs or intelligent monsters. For example: the Cathedral, Guardia's Prison, Magus' Castle, the Future Sewers, etc.

Please put the part not shown in spoilers I almost read it all, thanks.

Also Here's a interesting Idea MAKE THEM CAMP OUT! IT would make the game feel a bit more like a journey though some people might complain. If you want to break the formula a bit try this. This specifically reminds me of FF4 though.

OH GOODNESS I HAVE A GREAT EXAMPLE OF BREAKING THIS FORMULA WHO HERE HAS PLAYED GOLDEN SUN DARK DAWN!
The game gave you free roam of the world halfway through the game. Meaning you didn't know where to go and it broke the formula HARD! It pretty much said go explore and stuff. It still had a similar aspect but was far more free roaming/flying.

author=Murray
They kind of dropped the ball at the end of the game though. The "Last Dungeon" is about as long as "Halfway Dungeon" in terms of gameplay, but it feels much more boring because all it offers is battles, whereas "Halfway Dungeon" had TONS of memorable NPCs to talk to

This is a syndrome very common in RPGs. They tend to resolve all plot points just before the final dungeon, leaving the player only the last mission of kicking the final boss' ass. That makes for pretty unremarkable final dungeons (and in the worst cases, the final boss itself seems like a post scriptum to the real climax of the game).

author=Feldschlacht IV

Please put the part not shown in spoilers I almost read it all, thanks.

It's sort of weird to have an avatar of a character of a game you haven't really played, but okay we're all grown men here I guess

I got to the ice age and then my save file got deleted.

The trick to solving this problem is to simply remove dungeons.

Yes, making the town a dungeon works but IMO you're taking the OP too literally.

In game design, town - dungeon - town is simply a design that's less about what the terms actually mean but of this idea of battle area w/ plot - plot area w/ battle - battle area w/ plot.

Here's where other genre got it right. Most of them don't have dungeons because they understand that realistic roles don't happen in dungeons. Max Mcgee IMO was the only one who nailed a valid analogical answer but I'm not here to attack anyone so here's my own perspective of it.

I've only played Mage Duel Extreme so where Max got it right on the gladiator tournament, he sort of got it half right only because he zoomed in and turned an event into the whole point of the game. That's great but very inapplicable to general stories.

What you do then to eradicate the dungeon aspect is to "evolve" danger. For example many town that are acting as dungeons have dangerous alleys. Alleys are preferable attack spots because it's a great position point to ambush someone.

By understanding that - you can eradicate dungeon into dungeon towns already but obviously this is just a repeat of what others have said.

The idea is after you do this, you minimize dungeon towns by having something that actually replaces the dungeons.

Minimization occurs when you minimize dungeons. Tunnels for example make RTS games into single player exploration scenarios despite being dungeons because they are full of crossroads.

Upper and basement level black market rooms also serve to do this because most of the non-battle part of the dungeon is done in walking around the town.

The more you do these stuff, the more your dungeon towns simply become a town.

It's not enough though to call it something other than a dungeon town yet though. At some point we all know there's a good chance that a general story would need an XP farm location full of generic enemies that randomly pop up or walk around for no reason...and for it to happen again and again.

Here again is where you start to look at real life. Which events often have tons of enemies walking side by side in melee?

The obvious one of course is wars and battles. Create scenarios where you zoom in on the battles and where many bodies are spread around. Many great rpg maker games often have this and they are absolutely wonderful.

From here on, it's just a matter of thinking up more scenarios such as this:

-Create sidequests following these themes:

• Scouts
• Escorts
• Infiltration
• Espionage

...and instead of making the mistake of turning these areas into dungeons like many games, don't! Make these maps into simple maps but with the openness to allow for chaos. Imagine you are making a world map type of open plains each time. Instead of falling into the temptation of using next screens or walls, try to use bodies for walls and next screens for introducing bosses/more dangerous enemies. Where normally you put puzzles into dungeons, put puzzles as artifacts dropped by your comrades or by your opponent.

Example: A common puzzle is a blocked door and navigating a maze to get to treasures.

Instead of a maze, have a group of soldiers lined up. Instead of a treasure box, have a flanking enemy drop the item.

Basically minimize all aspects that makes dungeons, dungeons and after you do that put all your design tricks into replacing static walls/blocks into active situations. Think of it like a sleight of hand. If you or the players don't feel you are in a dungeon, you aren't!

Of course for more story based games with less combat, this issues are moot. You can use your creativity to minimize battle sequences and make level ups less relevant. Those just can't work for general game design though.

General game design at some point needs to accomodate mass killings to justify protection, hunter type of roles, well experienced battlers...even a basic peasant protecting himself from bandits.

Of course as hubs go, it's a decent idea but I still consider it cheap design that are just slightly less cliche than dungeons only for the fact that hubs are actually just better towns and what I gather from these suggestions is that the better quality you make an area, the more it fixes stuff. Well that's a given.

What I'm proposing is slightly similar but not really related to quality and more if you can't think of breaking a trope, look towards real life where many sandbox elements like hub stem from but just as much fail to really capture.