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Intellectual Property Means Nothing On Mobile
I haven't player either game, but looking at some videos, the graphics aren't that similar (both uses candy, but that's it) and the gameplay differs enough. Both have candy in their names, but frankly, both are about candy.
The problem I see is the Candy Swipe trademark getting canceled. It should not be possible for a later IP to cancel an earlier IP if said earlier IP actually is fully active. If Albert Ransom just had the Candy Swipe trademark, but didn't use it and now the trademark is simple clogging up the system and causing trouble for other people who wants to register candy related trademarks, then I could understand it. However, Candy Swipe seems fully active and as such, a junior trademark should not be given priority over it.
The letter sounds like complete BS though. It's done to honor his dead mother and he needs it to feed his family? Hey, throw in a few orphans who need your monthly donations as well when you're at it.
The problem I see is the Candy Swipe trademark getting canceled. It should not be possible for a later IP to cancel an earlier IP if said earlier IP actually is fully active. If Albert Ransom just had the Candy Swipe trademark, but didn't use it and now the trademark is simple clogging up the system and causing trouble for other people who wants to register candy related trademarks, then I could understand it. However, Candy Swipe seems fully active and as such, a junior trademark should not be given priority over it.
The letter sounds like complete BS though. It's done to honor his dead mother and he needs it to feed his family? Hey, throw in a few orphans who need your monthly donations as well when you're at it.
A Clash of Desires and Features!?
I think that you need to make an honest assessment of what kind of battle system you even can make. IIRC, the demo showed following problems:
Tile based movement that made the characters feel clumsy.
An event is considered to be on a new tile the very moment it starts moving. Ideally, you want the hitbox to be on whatever tile most of event looks like it's positioned on, assuming you can't do away with the tile based movement that is.
As the battle system was in the demo, it's not even possible to have action-y combat. You can still do real time combat, but not one that carries the feel of action. A real time tactical combat may work though. What I'm imagining then is a situation where the player has to look at the enemy lineup and quickly decide how to approach the enemy formation. Basically, the player cannot win battles by dodging enemy attacks, rather the idea is to figure out which character to control, which enemy to attack first, when to retreat with a character and let another one take the onslaught and so on.
Regardless of what you do, assess what you are even capable of and be honest to yourselves.
Both of you want NPCs with lives. If you do that then I'd recommend you either make only one town or if you make multiple towns, make them small. Multiple big towns makes it a pain to give lives to all NPCs. You can try something in between like one single major town and then a few tiny villages. Considering open world is one desired item, you may want to go with multiple villages. In any case, don't give yourselves a too big workload here.
You want interactive party members and endings based on the affection between them. How is this supposed to work? Unless things have changed, Zarric is Aelina's boyfriend. Suppose Aelina doesn't get more affection points with Zarric and instead gets a lot with Kyran. Will Aelina then switch boyfriend? Will character interaction during main storyline acknowledge the affection points?
Make sure you know how you want things to work because if you don't think it trough, you can easily cause conflicts between the main story and optional character relationship building. For example, you can get into a situation where Aelina and Zarric may have any range of affection from very low to very high when they are required to interact. Writing multiple dialogs takes a lot of effort, restricting yourself to lines that would make sense regardless of their affection will make the dialogs stiff and simple ignoring that their affection may be something entirely different from expected makes the game seem inconsistent.
I see character customization as one desire, but the character page also lists specific battle roles. Make sure you know exactly what should be customizable, skills and equipment is rather vague. Also one warning, too much customization often means battles becomes less tactical as players tend to customize their characters towards using a single brute force approach.
Overall, the project seems rather ambitious and I see a big risk you will bite more than you can chew. Some wishes also seem to conflict with what is already written about the project. Get on to determining what will be in the game and what won't ASAP. Really take the amount of work needed into consideration. If you want to give your project a decent chance to succeed, you need to implement your wishes in ways that won't bury you in an overwhelming amount of workload.
Tile based movement that made the characters feel clumsy.
An event is considered to be on a new tile the very moment it starts moving. Ideally, you want the hitbox to be on whatever tile most of event looks like it's positioned on, assuming you can't do away with the tile based movement that is.
As the battle system was in the demo, it's not even possible to have action-y combat. You can still do real time combat, but not one that carries the feel of action. A real time tactical combat may work though. What I'm imagining then is a situation where the player has to look at the enemy lineup and quickly decide how to approach the enemy formation. Basically, the player cannot win battles by dodging enemy attacks, rather the idea is to figure out which character to control, which enemy to attack first, when to retreat with a character and let another one take the onslaught and so on.
Regardless of what you do, assess what you are even capable of and be honest to yourselves.
Both of you want NPCs with lives. If you do that then I'd recommend you either make only one town or if you make multiple towns, make them small. Multiple big towns makes it a pain to give lives to all NPCs. You can try something in between like one single major town and then a few tiny villages. Considering open world is one desired item, you may want to go with multiple villages. In any case, don't give yourselves a too big workload here.
You want interactive party members and endings based on the affection between them. How is this supposed to work? Unless things have changed, Zarric is Aelina's boyfriend. Suppose Aelina doesn't get more affection points with Zarric and instead gets a lot with Kyran. Will Aelina then switch boyfriend? Will character interaction during main storyline acknowledge the affection points?
Make sure you know how you want things to work because if you don't think it trough, you can easily cause conflicts between the main story and optional character relationship building. For example, you can get into a situation where Aelina and Zarric may have any range of affection from very low to very high when they are required to interact. Writing multiple dialogs takes a lot of effort, restricting yourself to lines that would make sense regardless of their affection will make the dialogs stiff and simple ignoring that their affection may be something entirely different from expected makes the game seem inconsistent.
I see character customization as one desire, but the character page also lists specific battle roles. Make sure you know exactly what should be customizable, skills and equipment is rather vague. Also one warning, too much customization often means battles becomes less tactical as players tend to customize their characters towards using a single brute force approach.
Overall, the project seems rather ambitious and I see a big risk you will bite more than you can chew. Some wishes also seem to conflict with what is already written about the project. Get on to determining what will be in the game and what won't ASAP. Really take the amount of work needed into consideration. If you want to give your project a decent chance to succeed, you need to implement your wishes in ways that won't bury you in an overwhelming amount of workload.
Project Kobold VIP Access
The Game of Pessimism
I have a hard time imagine that working. To me it just looks like the game gives inaccurate information, meaning I'll just ignore it.
Simplified/Tactical Combat
Small numbers makes it easier to eyeball the effect of a decision, but it doesn't by itself make a decision matter more. Example, the player can choose between +3 HP or +1 attack in your low number system. Now, make a higher number system, say x90, where the player instead can choose between +270 HP and +90 attack. In the first system, it's easier for the player to gage the advantages and disadvantages of each choice, but the choice itself is equally important in both systems.
As turkeyDawg mentioned, players just mashing attack isn't a consequence of the players not being able to spot better options, usually there simple isn't a better option in the first place. Actually, usually there is, but that option becomes what you apam over and over instead of attack. Your system will not solve that problem. Suppose that midgame a fighter gets a skill that deals attack + 2 in damage and the skill is cheap enough to be spammed. Well, the player is most likely going to do exactly that, spam the +2 damage skill over and over.
That said, I definitely agree with getting rid of the small random factors. The 5% miss chance and the 4% critical hit chance does nothing but cause irritation. And definitely kill the luck stat, I have yet to see an RPG maker game with it where the author seems to understand how it affects status infliction rate and not merely that it does affect status infliction rate if even that.
As turkeyDawg mentioned, players just mashing attack isn't a consequence of the players not being able to spot better options, usually there simple isn't a better option in the first place. Actually, usually there is, but that option becomes what you apam over and over instead of attack. Your system will not solve that problem. Suppose that midgame a fighter gets a skill that deals attack + 2 in damage and the skill is cheap enough to be spammed. Well, the player is most likely going to do exactly that, spam the +2 damage skill over and over.
That said, I definitely agree with getting rid of the small random factors. The 5% miss chance and the 4% critical hit chance does nothing but cause irritation. And definitely kill the luck stat, I have yet to see an RPG maker game with it where the author seems to understand how it affects status infliction rate and not merely that it does affect status infliction rate if even that.
Stand-up Character
The most interesting characters I know does have great flaws. However, if I were to make a list of my least liked characters, it would also be filled with characters with great flaws. Great flaws is a high risk high yield strategy. If you're not a good writer I would recommend against it, your chances of writing another Tyrion or Rhue is slim to none.
That said, even if you're not a good writer, you should still not make your characters flawless. However, start with smaller flaws and work your way up as your writing improves.
That said, even if you're not a good writer, you should still not make your characters flawless. However, start with smaller flaws and work your way up as your writing improves.
Stand-up Character
author=Aegix_Drakan
giving them interesting flaws is a good way to start:
This doesn't work for me. Usually I add flaws last. I tend to begin with what strengths the characters have, their background and then from there I figure out what flaws makes sense and would work great with the characters. Generally, I only begin with flaws when they are either humorous or endearing.
What works varies from person to person, so giving a good advice is kind of hard.
Anyway, to answer the TC's questions, let's start with similarities. What may work is to look at what your game is about. Assuming it's a fairly standard RPG fare, all your playable characters are actively heading towards dangers, an act most people aren't willing to do. So all your characters could be similar to each other in the sense that they are people who are willing to take great risks if they view the cause as good enough or they may just be adventurous. Other story elements may also give them a common ground. Are they fighting an evil empire, being wanted by a powerful organization or is there anything else very prevalent in your story?
As for differences, I think you want differences that doesn't make characters into caricatures. Let's try a simple example, recklessness vs caution. Instead of having one character who always charges ahead and then another who likes to plan things, you can make it so that all characters would prefer having a good plan, but some are better than others at coming up with one. Also, if they fail to come up with a safe plan, some characters are quicker than others at concluding that they have to stop planning and make do with what they have so far. This gives them differences, but also maintains some common ground. Try that with other traits, use more a sliding scale type of approach than a black and white one.
Do You Put Spoilers in Reviews?
I don't spoil anything specific, but I will often tell about general occurrences a game has. For example, if your game features multiple scenes where the heroes defeat a villain and then are fed a tragic backstory about said villain, I will mention that.
Pom Gets Wi-Fi Review
The majority of the review does address issues that reviews are supposed to address. Heck, the only exception I can find is what's written under "Most Promising Demo" and that's one line. This is just another case of people getting upset over a low score review.
What do YOU look for in a (good) story? (In a video game)
author=Sooz
I've seen that expressed as
"This happens, then this happens, then this happens"
versus
"This happens, so this happens, so this happens,"
which I think is a pretty good way of summing it up. Events should lead fairly naturally to one another, so the audience can trace it all easily.
Alternatively, the game is set up so that events at first looks like it's the former, but once the player gets access to more information, it turns out that it was the latter that was going on all the time.
Anyway, I tend to prioritize likable characters. A good cast can carry most of the story by themselves. When it comes to what characters I like, I'm a characterization over character development kind of person. It's not as important to me that they have a in dept development as it is that they have good characterization. Further, they don't have to be good people, some of the characters I find the most annoying are in face very well-meaning, they just have to be good characters. Generally, they have to be good at whatever role they are supposed to play.
When it comes to plot, I prefer it making sense over it being complicated. I do not want a mess like Chrono Cross. Once I've beaten a game and look back on the story, every character's actions need to line up with their situation and personality. Nobody should ever do anything because the story demands it. If you have to write a very simple story to handle that, then I'd prefer if you do so. A simple story that makes sense is better than an epic story full of plot twists, but also full of plot holes.
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