BACKWARDS_COWBOY'S PROFILE

A few days ago in the U.S. we "celebrated" a year of pandemic-fueled lockdown, though some states (*cough*Florida an its exporting of cases to other states*cough*) have seen tougher times than others. I've worked in mental health for years, and the number of suicides, suicide attempts, overdoses, and repeat hospitalizations I've seen people go through lately has just stayed at a dangerously high level. I mean, we've got a 3-6 month waiting list for therapy at our practice, and even medication management has up to a month wait time.

So the real question is, after a year or more depending on where you live, how are you all holding up?

Several months ago, I remember seeing a tutorial of sorts that explained how to do some interesting things in RMVX Ace, among them creating skills that would deal damage based on whether or not an enemy was already inflicted with a status condition, whether they had been hit by a different skill, etc. all from the damage formula box without any other scripting. Either the tutorial was on here or the link to it was on here, and after about two hours of searching through old topics, I can't seem to find it. Does anybody know where it went or which site it was on? I had it bookmarked, but my computer crashed some time ago and I lost all my bookmarks and saved pages in my browsers.

I learned from the Humble Bundle that Final Fantasy III (Original NES III, not screwed up North American numbering III) is coming to Steam. It's more or less a port of the PSP version, which was a port of the iOS version with enhanced graphics , audio, and quick-battle, which was a port of the DS version with enhanced graphics, which was an actual remake... But this time, it has Steam Trading Cards and Steam Achievements. If you haven't yet played the original Final Fantasy III or one of its many remakes, this may be the most enhanced enhancement yet, and could be something for you to look into. Here's a link to an article with screenshots (the screenshots could be from one of three different remakes for all I know. All but the DS one look alike.): http://www.vg247.com/2014/05/09/final-fantasy-3-is-coming-soon-to-steam-for-pc/

So, I'm thinking about starting work on a new RPG VXAce game, and wanted to make a game similar in design to the Etrian Odyssey and Class of Heroes series. For starters, I always liked the amount of customization in those games. In addition to that, they seem to be a pretty easy game to make in terms of design and functionality. But before I start, I wanted to get a general idea of what people do like and what they don't like to see in this type of game. Of course, I've already got a few things in the "Don't" list, like excessive grinding and confusing map/interface layouts, and some stuff in the "Do" list, like character customization and optional sidequests.

A quick overview of the key differences I'd be having that could render some complaints obsolete:

- I wouldn't be doing the dungeons in first-person, so confusing mapping wouldn't be as much of an issue.

- As the game gets further along in completion, I'd be replacing the default material with custom graphics, so "RTP Quest" and recolored elemental enemies would be avoided.

Anyways, I wanted to get some feedback on the overall genre so I can avoid making a game that just pisses people off. I've got about three or four weeks of thought and some planning into it, so I have a pretty general idea of what I want to do, and want to be able to make changes based on the feedback before I get too far into it to do so.