CRYSTALGATE'S PROFILE

author=ShortStar
- Include enemy variety. Even the first level of SMB1 had more than goombas.
- Diversify your game. If you have a game with 10 levels. All 10 shouldn't be a desert. Make a pyramid, a desert, an underground level, a water level, a sky level, a castle and so on.

You should do that, but at the same time, don't show the player everything within a few levels. The Mario games will throw you new enemies and other not seen before content as you advance to new areas. If the player has seen every enemy, tileset and quirk that will ever be included in the game after half a dozen of levels, the game loses it's sense of progress.

author=Ratty524
While skill should definitely have more of a precedence in games, adding an element of luck is what keeps the game fresh and exciting.

For me, luck rarely has that effect. Usually when I'm lucky, it's at best a convenience and not so seldom even useless. For example, a character may succeed a 3% dodge when a multitarget heal is already scheduled because other characters have been hurt. Or I order three characters to attack the highest priority enemy and the second character scores a critical hit. Now the third character is free to hurt another enemy, only he targets one that has a low priority.

Unless I run into a boss under-prepared, I will win if I have an average luck. If I do run into a boss under-prepared, my solution is to prepare better and not to hope for better luck. So, usually when I'm lucky it means I win a battle I would have won anyway. However, being unlucky is far more likely to mean I lose a battle I otherwise would have won. The most blatant example I can think of is getting ambushed and having my party wiped without my characters getting even a single turn.

Due to RPGs being set up so that the player is expected to win and the monsters are expected to lose, randomness hinders the player far more than it helps. Even if I were to play a hard RPG where I'm likely to lose a boss battle, being lucky rarely compensated for being unlucky. For example, if at one round the boss misses with his attack and I score two criticals, it will not help me survive when I three turns later get unlucky. I pretty much has to be lucky right after first being unlucky for the luck to really help. In Monopoly, the element of luck is just as likely to help me as it is to hinder me, but not so much in video games.

I do need help and I put the problem in spoilers. I described two quests I'm stuck at and I need help to progress trough them. If one of the quests cannot be completed because the other quest is a prerequisite, then I only need help with the quest that I'm actually supposed to be able to beat now. Other than that, I also want to know where to find the shopkeeper I was told about.

While realism helps, I don't think that's all that contributes to a good looking area.

To make an area look good, each individual place within the area should look good. Basically, if you take a screen-shot while traversing the area you get a good screen-shot. However, even if something looks good, the player will eventually get tired of it. The most extreme example I can think of is if you make a really good looking room in a castle, but every room in that castle is identical. No matter how good looking that room is, the player will stop noticing that the room looks good once he already seen a dozen identical rooms. So, if you want the player to stay able to appreciate the area, you need to introduce some variety within it.

Now, let's take a mansion as an example. If you want to have puzzles in that mansion, then that may indeed make it harder to make the mansion realistic looking. However, it doesn't prevent you from making individual places, such as a bedchamber and a kitchen, look good. It doesn't prevent you from introducing variety either. The mansion can have a garden to traverse, a basement, two stories and an attic. A lack of realism even makes it easier to turn a garden into something that takes time to traverse since gardens in real life generally only slows you down if you care about not stepping on the flowers.

I believe that usually when an area looks bland it's not because of puzzles, but rather because of resources. It's not considered worth the time and money to make the areas good looking.

That said, realism does help and puzzles can indeed impede realism. Personally, I'm usually not interested in puzzles. Some puzzles are nice, but usually I'd wish the puzzle wasn't there. If you are going to have puzzles, I think I'd agree with Crimson_Legionnaire about designing the area around the puzzle. Do it properly or don't do it at all.

I'm playing it and so far it seems fun enough. Good job at making attack items useful.

The death animations of the enemies quickly gets old though. I would suggest only having them for story encounters and not for repeated fights.