AYANIN'S PROFILE

Okay... in an attempt to civilly addres at least some of the problems with my review, let me try to explain what happened, and the nature of my review and it's apparent "lacks" by a little story example that I think should pretty much clear up the whole thing, hopefully without crushing too many people's feelings.

Suppose I go to amazon.com and buy a $40 toaster. (Just put aside the fact that the example uses something that costs money... that is not relevant here.) The toaster gets to my house, I unpack it, put it in it's place, and the next morning I wake up, and go to have my breakfast. I plug the toaster in, I put the bread into it, put it down... and nothing happens. Okay... maybe it's a temporary problem. Try again. Nothing. Try a few more times. Nothing.

All right. I go to amazon.com. Go to the toaster's page. Go to the review section. Give it one star. Tell the story of what happened. The toaster I got of this model from this company didn't work when it arrived. Yes, I'm upset. After all, it was $40. But I try to stick to the fact that it didn't work, instead of resorting to calling the company names, and alleging they're frauds, which is usually not the case.

Then what?

Comment section:
"Okay... you told us it didn't work, but why the heck didn't you review anyting else about it?!"

Me: "Uh... because it didn't work. I mean... What can I say? It's.... shiny? I could turn it sideways and use it for a mirror maybe? But, it didn't work, so... what can I really say?"

"You are SO full of it... I got this toaster and it worked just fine. Best toaster I ever had!"

Me: "Well... I'm really happy that you're happy but the fact is... mine was DOA."

"That's not a fact. Everyone else's works just fine."

Me: "But mine is the same model, and it doesn't. That IS a fact."

"This is SO unfair to the manufacturer! There are 547 POSITIVE reivews on this toaster, and only you and a couple of other negative idiots rated it one star!"

Me: "Well, the one I got was defective. I mean, if it had worked great, I probably would have said that, right? But I can't know how it worked, if mine didn't work. And I think it's important for people to know how many people this happened to. If it was only a few people, great! Then only a few people will give it one star, and the truth will come out in the ratings."

"HAHAHAH! What a moron! You seriously don't even know how to make TOAST?!! WTH LOOSER?!!!"

Me: "Uh... actually, I'm about as good as the next person at making toast, but... if the toaster didn't work, it didn't work. That's kind of the toaster's fault. Not every malfunction is a user malfunction."

"This is so stupid... It worked for ME!!"

Me: "I'm happy that it did. However, mine was broken."

Okay... I'm hoping that at this point, everybody can see where this is going.

If you go to review soemthing, you're right... it should give whatever information you have to give. But if the product (in this case game) did not work for you, then you have no/limited knowledge of those other aspects, don't you? Chances are you saw little or nothing of it, so... how can you review those things that you didn't see, or didn't fully see? Seeing 3 or 4 areas of a game does not give me information enough to review the entire game's graphics or music. That's why I left those things out. Out of fairness. You don't judge the parts you did not fully experience. (At least I wouldn't.)

So why review it if you didn't see the whole game?! ... right? Remember the toaster! You get something, it's defective, you bet your bologna you rate it. And what does it get? 0 stars, right? Or as close to that as possible. Cause how can you give it more than that, if the product in question did not work for you? You've got no idea how it was, because yours was defective! (Are we on the same page yet?)

You also cannot review it based on someone else's experiences. Only your own. So if it didn't work for you, it didn't work for you. That's what you've got to put. "I tried this. It did not work! My experience was that this was (nigh)impossible!" I couldn't have put, "players 1-9,000 played this game that I found impossible and they say it's great, so, based on their experience, my experience was 5-stars!" But that's not how reviews work. A review relates YOUR experience. If it worked for all those other people, lovely! If it did not work for 10, then those 10 people are not being any less honest or right in saying it didn't work for them. It didn't. Hate to break it to you, but the personal bliss in your experience did not get those other people any farther in theirs.

It's also not right to assume a person is a moron or "doesn't know how to play games" just because their experience was different from yours. It pretty much goes without saying that if even one person was able to see the entire game, it was not LITERALLY impossible. But I didn't say it was LITERALLY impossible, now, did I? No... I believe I said something about it being not playable for ALL PLAYERS, because my experience proved that it was not playable for ALL PLAYERS. (The word "all" does actually mean "all" ... as in literally everyone.)

Finally, while some people may not agree, I beleive the ability of an average, even a non-gamer... to pick it up and play it, does matter, if the expectation of the player, given how it's presented, is that it will be playable by everyone. In the way Super Mario was playable, even if you never beat that blasted valley fortress! This qualm has to do with the content being able to be accessed to begin with. Not whether or not the person could, for example, perform the hardest quests or unlock all the secrets. It's a judgment about whether anyone could enjoy the basic gameplay. That seems to me to be a pretty major point. I tried leveling up. I tried going back and talking to everybody. I tried searching nearly every tile I saw. I tried different strategies in battle. The bosses were, in my personal experience, still nigh impossible. (I say nigh, because again, obviously, if they were literally so, then no one could have beaten it.)

And the person who said I wasn't personally attacking the author was correct. I wasn't. I simply meant that people in general need to learn to be a whole lot more open to other people's experiences, criticisms and input, and not just when it's positive, because it's important (vital actually) for acheiving your full potential as whatever kind of creator/producer you happen to be. If you believe your work is always perfect, or even always close enough to it that you cannot admit problems (or will only selectively do so), then you can't fix those problems. So you don't progress as what you are. There was no malicious, hidden attack intended. I also added that I hold myself up to the same standards for that very reason, so it's not just that I'm going around picking on everyone else for some kind of sick fun, either. That doesn't mean I'm perfect, but that I don't believe in double standards... a set for myself and a set for everybody else, even if I myself must often admit something I've done is also "sub par".

But look... One person posts a negative review. Says they personally had a bad experience with the game, and even tries to explain what happened, and gives the reason for their low rating, even if some may not agree. And what is the response?

1) You suck at reviewing, because you don't agree that it's good.
2) You suck at playing games, because your experience differs from mine.
3) Why the -beep- did the mods allow this dissenting viewpoint?! Unsightly! Get it off!
4) Misc. other personal attacks upon the reviewer.

So... why did I feel the need to make that comment about being able to take in criticism?

The review might not have been as elegantly given as some may have liked (and others might have not detected the hint of sarcasm at the point where I said if you like the pretty game over screen, and what not, go for it), but a review is a review. The reviewer only has their personal experience to relate. They do not have yours. As long as it relates a real experience that someone actually had, as they gave a reasonable effort to play the game with an open mind, how is that not legitimate?

author=Volrath
Your long re-enactment of the battles lacks a pretty crucial element. Status effects. Use them. It's not an "insane/ridiculous amount of effort," it's clicking the arrow keys and the enter key a couple of times.

Actually, I didn't overlook that. (See #1, which pretty much sums up that you have about one round to figure out how not to die, as best as possible.)

If the game is balanced, you should not have to deal with enemies/bosses that can take you out in two hits, precisely for the reason that the player can easily (not just if they mess up more than the average player) end up in a never-ending cycle situation, where in order to live you have to heal yourself, but then the boss cuts you back to near dead again, but the only way to prevent that is to use status effecting things... but the only way to do that is basically to risk getting completely wiped out next round. It simply should not be that close.

Also, when even the ordinary monsters are that difficult, it's already out of balance.

I'm not just picking on this game because it was difficult. I played another RPG maker RPG that was frankly, very difficult, both fight-wise and puzzle-wise,and frankly I loved it, with the exception of a few points. But the monsters were usually only exceptionally bad in special areas, and while the bosses were difficult, I don't recall them being nigh impossible. If you were careful, and used strategy, it was doable. But you got multiple rounds into the fight, at least, before messing up would get you killed. This was over the top, even for "difficult".

Incidentally, I didn't exactly quit the first time a boss crushed me like an ant, either. I was willing to put in a reasonable amount of effort to overcome the obstacles I met, but if the same thing keeps happening, even after stopping to gain a few levels before moving on (which didn't make any difference for the next area)... then there seems to be a greater problem.

Re: Oblic "not my genre"

Actually RPGs were one of the few genre's I've ever been willing to play. I haven't actually played (done more than tried the play control on) a FPS since about the Quake II days (does anyone even remember that game?). I'd wager my problem is actually that I like RPGs too much. To the point that I was so disgusted by what the age of eye-candy did to them (when it got to the point that we were supposed to be so awed by the lack of female clothing that we were supposed to fail to notice the lack of originality and substance... something that only got harder to do as time went on), I actually quit playing them, for the most part. Which would be why I was here looking for indie games. When originality dies in the indie field, it's time to take up table tennis or knitting.

But I am years into the development of a novel heavily inspired by my love of RPGs, to give you some idea where I stand on that matter.

But I will say this... I think the worst thing that can happen to an artist of any kind (writer, game maker, graphic artist, etc.) is that they come to the point where the only words they can or would accept, are those of praise. At the point where any of us refuses to hear what may be wrong with our works, we stop growing, there, as whatever kind of artist we are. If you aren't even willing to entertain the idea that you might have made a mistake soemwhere, there's no way you're going to learn from whatever you messed up, and if you can't learn from your mistakes, then you can never advance.

Just so everyone knows, I don't give criticism like this to be a jerk. I give it because if it were me, and someone could come to me with a criticism that did turn out to be true about what I'd done, then that would be a piece of information I would need to know in order to fix that work, and hopefully not make the same mistakes again. A lot of people just hear hatred or cruelty, whenever someone disagrees with or finds fault with their work... but it isn't about being nasty. On the contrary, it's about giving honest feedback on an experience that I (random player) had, that may expose something that is fundamentally wrong with the work. In other words, it's about giving the only kind of feedback that will actually matter. "Great job" feels good on the ego, but as a creative person, I've found that it's pretty worhtless if you honestly want to get better at what you're passionate about. I've also heard people say I'm my own worst critic... but it's funny how they don't complain too loudly when the quality of my work actually improves because of that "harsh" judgment. In reality, what I strive for is CLEAR judgment. "Harsh" judgment and clear judgment are two different things. One is about seeing mistakes where they don't exist. The other is about seeing them where they do exist... seeing reality... so that you can make corrections accordingly. That's the kind of judgement the world is now in dire need of.

Returning to the game, I suppose you could say lots of people probably played this game with the walkthroughs and had no problem at all with it, but like I said... you shouldn't have to essentially cheat in order to get through it. (Wasn't there an article on this very topic on one of the various RPG Maker blogs?) It should be simple enough that the majority can get through it without wanting to pull their hair out. If there's some knowledge that is vital, it shouldn't be hidden away somewhere where most players aren't even going to look. Keep in mind a lot of people don't want to waste time visiting all the "training rooms" in that first town. Right or wrong, they just don't. Why not? Well, the assumption is, whatever's out there, shouldn't be too difficult to figure out on your own. And as that article pointed out, they shouldn't really be mistaken in that assumption. What you need to know that is actually vital to play the game, really should be pretty obvious.

So yeah... that's a pretty major problem, as far as I can see.

Scandalous!!

But seriously, it's surprising how many people are using illegally ripped stuff, when there is actually a lot of original material coming out specifically FOR rpg maker, that doesn't cost all that much, on the official RPG Maker site. (And if you know where to look, you can even get some pretty good things legitimately for free, for commercial use, that are 100% original creations of their authors.)

I mean, really... why steal, if you can be legit? Granted it's been harder, but also a lot more rewarding. As a matter of policy, I simply will not use anything unless I can be as sure as humanly possible that the author has made something 100% original, and that they have given permission for commercial use, if I want to use it commercially.

Of course, it helps if you can learn to make your own materials, too. And there are tutorials for that, out there, incidentally. (And cheap graphics tablets that work in a pinch, but don't cost a small fortune... unless perhaps you have literally no money at all. ~_~,) Music is a bit harder, of course... but so far my music budget is $0, and I've got software that allows me to make music for commercial use, without an instrument... which, admittedly, will probably take a while to learn... but hey, education doesn't end when you graduate, right?

I am thinking that there is noooo way I want to make another game with my current programmer... and that I really, really should be writing right now... but how to break it to my programmer that there may not be a shining future for us, together...

NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO! How did I manage to miss EVERYTHING?!!!!

Oh the huge manatee!! ^0^

... so... are you guys ever going to offer vx ace as a prize again for anything else? >,>