Full Games List
Featured Games
New Games
Reviews
Media
Images
Blogs
Game Updates
Images Feedback Summary
Game Design Highlights
Tutorials
Articles
Scripts
Utilities / Plugins
Resources
Engines
Engine Bulletins
What is Makerscore?
Past Events
Achievements
Misaos
Forums
Chat
New to RMN?
Full Store List
RMN Music Pack (free)
Profile
Locker
Play ListsCRYSTALGATE'S PROFILE
Crystalgate
694
CloseSearch
Filter
All
Game Pages
User Statuses
What Videogames Are You Playing Right Now?
Tales of Zestiria: Reached the point where I need to get all earthen historia to progress. The game kind of treated them as optional in the sense that you could skip most of them entirely. This is no longer the case though.
Eventually I got a good grasp on the combat system. The game has quite a learning curve. The problem is that it throws in a lot of advanced mechanics while you're still grasping with the basics. The tutorials you get at the beginning of the game seem more helpful on a second playtrough to be honest.
The writing is still great, but it also seem a bit bland at places. The game is mostly about humanity and human society. It started out great, giving the main character a lot of power, but then quickly showing how useless super powers are at solving problems that have the root at society. For example, a war started and the hero was told that he can choose a side and make that side the victor, but either way one side will suffer the consequences of a loss and people will die during the war. He can't stop the war in a manner that doesn't defeat the purpose of doing so.
The problem is that lately, the party's discussion about humanity seem rather uninspired and bland. I suspect that the cause is that they make a comment about humans every time something happens. You may have inspiration for a few things to bring up, but hardly for fifty different aspects of the same subject.
The writing is, even though a bit tired, still great. I just wish they hadn't decided that they need a commentary about humanity for every town, dungeon, plot progression and side-quests.
Eventually I got a good grasp on the combat system. The game has quite a learning curve. The problem is that it throws in a lot of advanced mechanics while you're still grasping with the basics. The tutorials you get at the beginning of the game seem more helpful on a second playtrough to be honest.
The writing is still great, but it also seem a bit bland at places. The game is mostly about humanity and human society. It started out great, giving the main character a lot of power, but then quickly showing how useless super powers are at solving problems that have the root at society. For example, a war started and the hero was told that he can choose a side and make that side the victor, but either way one side will suffer the consequences of a loss and people will die during the war. He can't stop the war in a manner that doesn't defeat the purpose of doing so.
The problem is that lately, the party's discussion about humanity seem rather uninspired and bland. I suspect that the cause is that they make a comment about humans every time something happens. You may have inspiration for a few things to bring up, but hardly for fifty different aspects of the same subject.
The writing is, even though a bit tired, still great. I just wish they hadn't decided that they need a commentary about humanity for every town, dungeon, plot progression and side-quests.
Making Grinding Fun
author=InfectionFiles
Not sure if it has already been mentioned but adding quests alongside grinding I think makes it feel more fluid and rewarding.
On top of the gold or exp gain you're also actively doing something for something else.
Adding in repeatable quests that tie in with monster grinding can break up the monotony somewhat.
The question is, what rewards do you give to the players for beating the quests besides the exp and gold they get for extra monster fighting? The more rewards you give, be it story, lore or a mechanical advantage, the greater the chance that players who don't want to grind end up doing the quests anyway and over level. The less rewards, the less you make the player feel they are doing something worthwhile.
Your idea should work if the level of rewards is set correctly and you can communicate to the players what to expect. However, mess this up and you create a problem rather than mitigating one.
Making Grinding Fun
Generally speaking, grinding means you have a goal and in order to reach that goal, you perform an activity you otherwise would not have performed. Since grinding is as a rule an activity you don't perform for the sake of the activity itself, it's not something you can bet on being fun. However, the closer you are to the goal, the less frustrating the grinding will seem. Also, the more fun the grinding activity is, the more time it takes for that activity to get boring once you have to overdose on it.
The most obvious example is running around in circles to grind exp. If you're just half an exp bar away from getting the desired level, you will feel less demotivated than if you're three level ups away. Likewise, if fighting battles were fun, it takes longer for them to reach the boring status than it would have been if they were rather bland to begin with. Combine the two mitigating circumstances and you get a grinding that's still decently fun, but for most players not as fun as playing "normally".
You can try different tricks. Kingdom Hearts 1 has the 99 Dalmatians and a lot of trinities + other hidden stuff to find. After a certain point, all worlds get updated enemies. If you're going for the optional bosses and need extra levels, chance is you also need synthesis materials as well. So, you can grind both exp and materials while hunting down all collectibles you want. This has a decent chance of working out, players who want to kill all optional bosses are more likely to care about collectibles such as the 99 Dalmatians than players who don't. However, this is far from always so and players who want to kill the optional bosses, but don't care about cleaning the worlds out, can look forward to the good old running around in circles.
The most obvious example is running around in circles to grind exp. If you're just half an exp bar away from getting the desired level, you will feel less demotivated than if you're three level ups away. Likewise, if fighting battles were fun, it takes longer for them to reach the boring status than it would have been if they were rather bland to begin with. Combine the two mitigating circumstances and you get a grinding that's still decently fun, but for most players not as fun as playing "normally".
You can try different tricks. Kingdom Hearts 1 has the 99 Dalmatians and a lot of trinities + other hidden stuff to find. After a certain point, all worlds get updated enemies. If you're going for the optional bosses and need extra levels, chance is you also need synthesis materials as well. So, you can grind both exp and materials while hunting down all collectibles you want. This has a decent chance of working out, players who want to kill all optional bosses are more likely to care about collectibles such as the 99 Dalmatians than players who don't. However, this is far from always so and players who want to kill the optional bosses, but don't care about cleaning the worlds out, can look forward to the good old running around in circles.
Using Chance well in games
As far as JRPGs are concerned, I prefer if chance mainly alters how things play out rather than whether or not something is going to be hard. For example, an enemy randomly deciding between directly attacking or buffing another enemy's attack stat is better than an enemy randomly deciding between a weak single target attack and a strong multi target attack.
When it comes to chance where one outcome is definitely better than the other, such as evasion, it works better if the game is set up so that it's multiple rolls that matters rather than single rolls in critical situations. Over a hundred attacks, if you have 30% evasion, you can expect to evade somewhat close to 30 attacks and that way conserve healing. If you get unlucky in one battle, geting lucky in another will compensate as far as resource conserving is concerned. However, in a game where characters are restored to full HP between battles, every battle will count and if you get a string of unlucky rolls in one, it will not help you at all if you get a lucky string in another. Heck, getting lucky just means you end up winning and getting fully healed, just like you'd do with normal luck.
When it comes to chance where one outcome is definitely better than the other, such as evasion, it works better if the game is set up so that it's multiple rolls that matters rather than single rolls in critical situations. Over a hundred attacks, if you have 30% evasion, you can expect to evade somewhat close to 30 attacks and that way conserve healing. If you get unlucky in one battle, geting lucky in another will compensate as far as resource conserving is concerned. However, in a game where characters are restored to full HP between battles, every battle will count and if you get a string of unlucky rolls in one, it will not help you at all if you get a lucky string in another. Heck, getting lucky just means you end up winning and getting fully healed, just like you'd do with normal luck.
What are the most simple battle systems that still work well?
author=Gale
How do you produce emergent complexity in a battle system? What are some games which do this well?
I have never seen this done in a JRPG, which is what most of the makers are designed for. I have seen emergent complexity happen in roguelikes such as ADoM and Nethack though.
Your question does to a great extent get into how you make JRPG combat interesting and varied. There has been a lot of topics and articles about it in this site, but again, I have not seen anything that can be called emergent being produced. The closest I've seen is "the multi-target paralyze spell which only have a 25% chance to hit managed to paralyze three out of four heroes, now I can only pray that the RNG allows me to resolve the situation it got me into" which tends to not be very popular.
You are kind of on your own. I would suggest you try the following first step though:
Make a couple of enemies that provoke different tactics from the players. Note that I'm not asking you to just make enemies that themselves do different things from each other, I'm asking you to make the players fight them differently.
Lord Killian and the Sacred Heart Shards
IIRC, you used to promise a lighthearted JRPG experience, so I don't think a few cliche lore objects are a problem. I've noticed you've changed the summary page though.
Race and Gender in Games
author=Perihelion
Please don't get me wrong; I'm not saying people should scrub everything that could possibly be interpreted as a negative stereotype from their work, because you'll end up with a dull and insipid story if you go too far down that path. I definitely don't think all female characters have to be strong and powerful and emotionless, for example. I'm just saying that if you decide to make the only female character weak and timid, then you should consider whether your reason for doing so outweighs the fact that you're supporting a stereotype.
If you make the only female character weak and timid, there's a good chance that the idea of women being weak and timid sits somewhere in the back of your mind. This goes double if you have already written a lot of male characters and none of them are weak and timid. This of course doesn't contradict what you said, it's yet another reason why you should double check whatever you're writing and consider carefully if it's a good idea.
That said, a simple "does any of my characters represent a common stereotype?" check should cover you in the vast majority of cases.
Race and Gender in Games
I have a suspicion that most of the barriers lies in people's heads. I often see straight people saying they don't know how to write a homosexual, but I can not recall having heard the opposite. Heck, I even notice men claiming they can't write women so well far more frequently than I see the opposite happening.
If you're a man and writing a male character, how often do you think "he should do/be that because he's a man"? Chance is, seldom, if ever. That's how often you should think "she should do/be that because she's a woman" when writing a female character. The same applies to ethnicity and sexual orientation.
You also absolutely do not have to address discrimination. That mentality will help nobody. If writing a homosexual character means you have to address discrimination homosexuals faces, this in turn means that any time you don't intend to address that issue, you don't want to write a homosexual character. All you're doing by feeling compelled to address discrimination is to attach luggage to some types of characters and consequently making them harder to write.
If you're a man and writing a male character, how often do you think "he should do/be that because he's a man"? Chance is, seldom, if ever. That's how often you should think "she should do/be that because she's a woman" when writing a female character. The same applies to ethnicity and sexual orientation.
You also absolutely do not have to address discrimination. That mentality will help nobody. If writing a homosexual character means you have to address discrimination homosexuals faces, this in turn means that any time you don't intend to address that issue, you don't want to write a homosexual character. All you're doing by feeling compelled to address discrimination is to attach luggage to some types of characters and consequently making them harder to write.
Symmetry in Battle Systems
Symmetry is very useful if you have confusion or any other effect where you can get hit by your own strength (like Star Ocean 3's anti attack auras). It's not too uncommon that confusion is absolutely deadly for heroes, but for enemies it's just like sleep, but they have a random chance to wake each other up.
You can however solve those cases other ways. For example, nothing says that a confusion attack has to use the default attack command.
That said, I prefer to give heroes and cannon fodder enemies symmetry. It actually seems easier to do so than not to do so. It halves the number of formulas to keep track of.
You can however solve those cases other ways. For example, nothing says that a confusion attack has to use the default attack command.
That said, I prefer to give heroes and cannon fodder enemies symmetry. It actually seems easier to do so than not to do so. It halves the number of formulas to keep track of.
What Videogames Are You Playing Right Now?
I started Tales of Zestiria over. I left it for long enough and wasn't very far, so starting from scratch made the most sense.
The story is very good for a Tales game and I would say good even outside of Tales standard. In particular, the game is good at portraying how people react to various events.
Combat is enjoyable, but has problems. It's a bit clunky at its core and has a lot of feature creep. The feature creep tends to get introduced in waves, suddenly you get one tutorial message every battle for 5+ battles in row. Then it ends for a while until a new wave of tutorials start.
The story is very good for a Tales game and I would say good even outside of Tales standard. In particular, the game is good at portraying how people react to various events.
Combat is enjoyable, but has problems. It's a bit clunky at its core and has a lot of feature creep. The feature creep tends to get introduced in waves, suddenly you get one tutorial message every battle for 5+ battles in row. Then it ends for a while until a new wave of tutorials start.
Games - Tester
Games - Other
