CRYSTALGATE'S PROFILE

author=argh
The battle system looks more complicated than most RPG Maker games while still being pretty easy to understand. I like that SP affects defense; that adds an extra layer of consideration to blowing all of it on powerful skills.

I think that this is because the battle system isn't really very complex, rather it has a lot of depth. Medium complexity/high depth is what I think describes it best.

Anyway, as far as the proving goes, I'm strongly in the camp of it being an inefficient system. One reason being that the participants have already gone trough an elite soldier training when they are pitted against each other in a death match. That said, they do get very good training (for sanity's sake I'm going to assume "worth 50 soldiers" is an exaggeration) and I can imagine someone higher up vastly over-crediting their combat prowess to the proving.

I'm not sure that "using items without fear" is a good thing. If you can use them without fear of running out, then there's no element of decision-making needed to use them, you just use them if they are convenient to use. I do understand that if the players are too afraid of using items then they may actually end up eating game overs because they are desperately trying to conserve them even if the designer didn't intend that of a restrictive use. A reasonable amount of fear seems ideal to me in most cases.

If the player is absolutely adamant about conserving items for a later that never happens, even if the game is actively trying to discourage that behavior, then chance is I'd just consider that player a lost cause. It depends on how many players who fall into that trap. If 80% does so, then I would assume I have done a poor job of communicating how the game works. However, with reversed numbers, meaning 80% gets it, then I'd feel justified to tell the remaining 20% to "stop over-conserving or stop playing", but in a nicer way.

I do think you can reach most of the players by communicating the intention of your game properly.

Of course, if your intention is that the player should be able to stock up 99 of every healing item, then go ahead.

There is no one specific way to handle items. However, if you do allow the player to carry 99 of every potion and ether, why not just make HP and MP refill after every battle? The player will not run out of healing, MP typically takes the role of something that hinders you from spamming the most expensive stuff, but you nevertheless are almost insured to have it if you need it.

There are exceptions, but this is typically how it works if the player can stock up 99 of every item. Check; is your game really an exception? If not, then I see little point in not refilling all HP and MP after every battle.

Anyway, if you are wondering how hard you should make the game, first consider how the player can combat the higher difficulty. In an action game, if a difficulty makes enemies deal twice the damage they normally do, this means you have to play better so you get hit only half as often or less. However, is this even possible in your RPG?

Figure out what the player can do to reduce or prevent incoming damage. Now, the more preventable an attack is, the more you can increase its power without making the game unreasonable. Unpreventable attacks reduced to whatever the player can reduce it to are mandatory damage.

If you raise the enemy stats across the board, you will raise both preventable and mandatory damage. The player can do nothing about the mandatory damage itself, but it can compensate by better avoiding the preventable damage so the mandatory damage doesn't become overwhelming. If you haven't planned the game well, the preventable and mandatory damage can be haphazardly distributed. One troop could have only preventable damage while the other deals almost entirely mandatory damage.

Let's say your game is considered to easy. Both troops are equally hard since the player doesn't bother avoiding the preventable damage, there's no point to it. So, you raise stats of all enemies to make them harder. This is all good for the first troop since the player can avoid that extra damage it deals. However, the second troop is now unreasonable hard. Worst case scenario, you can make a game where either the player has no reason to bother using tactics or the game is too hard even if the player do use good tactics.

This is an extreme example since a troop rarely have entirely mandatory damage. Even so, I have seen a lot of RPGs where there are some encounters which you can more or less shut down entirely while others there is very little you can do, you win because the game gives you the numbers needed to win.

author=iddalai
If these games like FFV, FFVI & DQ3 got it wrong then why do most of us replay them to death? Surely not because we bought them at some point, we more than justified their purchase by now, so why keep on replaying them?

We like how these games were made. Hence we play them.

I already stated that I have no problem with DQ3 and FFVI. Class changing and espers are nowhere as integral to those games as the job system in FFV is. As for FF V, that game unlocks the class change very quickly. Had that game, say stuck you with one class for the first 8 hours, I would not have liked it nearly as much and I suspect the same would go for a lot of other FF V fans.

Now for FF XIII, it's a very common complaint that the game takes way to long to hand the player the reins. I do not think that it would have been less popular had that game been quicker at unlocking stuff. Rather, I suspect that a lot of people who like FF XIII like it in spite of the snail phase start rather than because of it. There are obviously exception, but I believe it's exactly that, exceptions.

Most means more than 50%. Looking again, you also included a usually which means more often than 50%, so together there's room for your statement to apply to only slightly more than 25%. I don't think that was what you meant though and frankly, slightly more than 25% still sounds like a too high percentage.