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Guardian Frontier
An RPG with classic-style gameplay and a non-classic premise, inspired by the history of exploration and colonialism of the 19th century.
An RPG with classic-style gameplay and a non-classic premise, inspired by the history of exploration and colonialism of the 19th century.
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How to add fun to grinding?
If you can breeze through battles, it certainly makes grinding more manageable, but it kind of raises the question of why the grinding is necessary in the first place. If the battles are really trivial, then I think they may not really be adding much to the gameplay.
I like to have some element of resource management going on, where each battle does something to affect my ability to complete later battles. If you can just wipe out all the enemies before they have a chance to attack and lose only a trivial amount of MP, or nothing at all, then all they're really doing is stalling you.
I like to have some element of resource management going on, where each battle does something to affect my ability to complete later battles. If you can just wipe out all the enemies before they have a chance to attack and lose only a trivial amount of MP, or nothing at all, then all they're really doing is stalling you.
Forever's End Review
Considering what they cost in the game right now, I don't think wasting the money you spent on a reasonable stock of healing items would be a huge loss. On the other hand, I might be biased by spending more time grinding than most players.
(I have absolutely terrible preferences, where I like both grinding and getting ahead of the level curve, and get catharsis from stomping on enemies that are expected to be challenging, but also like being legitimately challenged in combat. I have the most fun in games which offer optional content which remains challenging even if you take advantage of all the avenues the game offers to strengthen your characters, but honestly, I would not envy a game designer who was forced to cater to my whims.)
If you're planning to nerf the game's healing items, I'd think about maybe boosting Goldo's Essence battle skill up to Kinetic Essence or something to keep him from losing too much of his combat effectiveness. As an alternative, or possibly additional option, you might try implementing more restrictive caps for the number of healing items players can carry. The Star Ocean games offered cheap, effective healing items, for instance, but at a cap of 20 in your inventory they weren't an overwhelming asset (although admittedly the huge variety of different healing items offered late in the game kind of defeated the purpose of the cap.)
(I have absolutely terrible preferences, where I like both grinding and getting ahead of the level curve, and get catharsis from stomping on enemies that are expected to be challenging, but also like being legitimately challenged in combat. I have the most fun in games which offer optional content which remains challenging even if you take advantage of all the avenues the game offers to strengthen your characters, but honestly, I would not envy a game designer who was forced to cater to my whims.)
If you're planning to nerf the game's healing items, I'd think about maybe boosting Goldo's Essence battle skill up to Kinetic Essence or something to keep him from losing too much of his combat effectiveness. As an alternative, or possibly additional option, you might try implementing more restrictive caps for the number of healing items players can carry. The Star Ocean games offered cheap, effective healing items, for instance, but at a cap of 20 in your inventory they weren't an overwhelming asset (although admittedly the huge variety of different healing items offered late in the game kind of defeated the purpose of the cap.)
Are achievements a poor way to increase game length?
author=Link_2112
So, it seems like every reason why achievements are bad is a personal taste issue.
Of course it's a personal taste issue. anything one might like or not like about video games is a matter of personal taste. I'm not arguing that achievement systems are objectively bad, but I'm describing my own reasons for why they detract from my enjoyment when I play a game.
author=Link_2112
I don't feel that it even classifies as game design, because it doesn't affect the game in any way. If you quit a game solely because it has achievements and then you start writing bad reviews of the game because of that, you are insane and should have all video game privileges revoked.
Bottom line is if an achievement is not required to beat a game, or obtain anything in game, then it can't possibly be bad design. It's an extra thing that can be totally ignored if you don't like it and you can still play the game as intended and beat it without issue. Nobody is forcing anything on you, you are forcing it on yourself. It's not the game devs fault and everyone else is enjoying themselves.
Here's another example of something that isn't required to beat the game. Listening to Navi. Every time she shouts "Hey! Listen!" you can just ignore her. True fact! But somehow she managed to become the most notoriously hated aspect of the game. Maybe those people are just insane and should have their video game privileges revoked.
author=Link_2112
Everyone has a different set of things they want to do. Suggesting that there should be no list, rather than to see one that you don't approve of, is very selfish. And if such a minor thing would cause you to have less fun, then...well...I feel sorry for you.
If we're going to play the "I feel sorry for you" game, maybe I should feel sorry for you for needing a little trophy to tell you it's okay to be proud of yourself for accomplishing something in the game? Or sorry for you for not being able to come up with interesting challenges for yourself without the game designers telling you what to do?
But really, that would be fake condescension. I don't feel sorry for the people who like achievements in their games. Most of all I don't feel sorry for them because they don't get other people making them out to be dysfunctional or selfish for stating their game preferences, although considering how aggrieved some people get just from hearing that other people simply don't share their preferences, you'd really think they were constantly besieged.
But you should really, seriously stop and think for a second about what it means to call people "selfish" for preferring not to have an achievement system. You like having it, it makes the game more fun for you when it's there. I don't like having it, it makes it less fun for me when it's there. I'm aware that if my preferences were implemented, a lot of people would be deprived of something they want, and I'd be very wary about mandating my own preferences considering it would mean forcing them on so many other people. But the reverse is also true, that mandating your preferences hurts some people's experience, and telling them that they're somehow dysfunctional, or have the wrong approach to video games, don't make your preferences unselfish, it just makes you more judgmental and defensive about them.
Are achievements a poor way to increase game length?
author=Feldschlacht IV
The issue with this logic I think is that most of the achievements in video games is usually (with notable piss poor exceptions) objectively impressive shit. '100% Bestiary' or 'Defeat superboss with 10% HP remaining' or 'Parry all hits of Chun-Li's Houyoku Sen' are the kinds of things that most gamers will agree are pretty cool if you can pull it off. Of course not everyone will agree on some achievements, but developers usually put some thought into what sort of things deserve to be called an 'achievement'.
Of those three examples you gave, only one of them is something I would personally be interested in trying to accomplish in gameplay. It's fine if other people are interested in the others, different people have their own priorities... but then, being given a checklist of Things To Accomplish In The Game which has a whole bunch of things I don't actually want to do, it's just going to piss me off and make me have less fun.
author=Feldschlacht IV
You sure about that homie? Yes, those things carry their own reward, but there's also a social reward in other people seeing it. How many people would covet Ferrari's if they had a spell put on them that made everyone who wasn't the owner see the car as a 1993 Geo Metro? Shit is cool because you did it, sure, but shit is also cool because other people know about it. Hence the timeless expression of "DUDE DID YOU SEE THAT!?"
Sure, the overwhelming majority of the value in having a Ferrari is that other people can see that you have a Ferrari. And if you're playing an MMORPG or something, the value of having a super epic god-tier sword is not just that it lets you kill shit better, but that other players can see that you managed to get your hands on a super epic god-tier sword.
But that doesn't mean it's necessary, or even helpful, to have a big list of things which the player has and hasn't Achieved in the game. You don't need little trophy on a screen to tell you that catching all the pokemon is difficult and time consuming, and if you do it, there's nothing stopping you from going around and showing people "check it out, I caught all the pokemon!" If you want to turn your video game accomplishments into a competition or status symbol, you can always post screenshots or videos online.
There's no shortage of the things you could turn into a competition. You could read books to show off. Maybe get a badge for blowing through a 500+ page book in one day, get badges for finishing Finnegan's Wake, or A Brief History of Time, or Infinite Jest, or for finishing over 40 fantasy novels. Probably some people would like it. Some people already read for the sake of showing off. But a lot of people think of those people as twits, and a system like that would almost certainly ruin reading for a lot of people.
author=Feldschlacht IV
spoiler alert: everything is arbitrary
Yeah, so people can decide for themselves whether something is worth competing over. That's exactly why putting a great big sign reading "YOU SHOULD BE COMPETING OVER THIS!" stands to piss a lot of people off. If some things were just objectively worth competing over and other things weren't, and everyone could tell which was which, we'd never have to worry about conflicts like this.
What elements from existing games would you like to see reused?
Star Ocean 2 definitely went kind of overboard in making some substantial elements hard to find, but I like a game to keep exploration fun on its own terms, and offer occasional extra rewards for engaging in it.
Some events in Star Ocean 2, like getting Opera, or far worse, getting Ernest, are way too easy to miss, because you have to go out of your way to stumble upon the hints about where you have to go further out of your way. I would try to find a medium where the major optional content takes very little looking to find the hints that it's available to look for, and if you do look for it, the game offers points of feedback so you don't just wander around randomly hoping you're getting closer to it, but you still ultimately end up having to go well out of your way to find things.
Some events in Star Ocean 2, like getting Opera, or far worse, getting Ernest, are way too easy to miss, because you have to go out of your way to stumble upon the hints about where you have to go further out of your way. I would try to find a medium where the major optional content takes very little looking to find the hints that it's available to look for, and if you do look for it, the game offers points of feedback so you don't just wander around randomly hoping you're getting closer to it, but you still ultimately end up having to go well out of your way to find things.
Are achievements a poor way to increase game length?
author=Feldschlacht IV
-It a reward system for a style of play, overcoming a challenge, or doing something otherwise remarkable. Achievements are fun because its external recognition and affirmation for doing something cool or challenging.
Regardless of what you say, everyone likes this. You liked getting a gold sticker from your teacher for getting an A+ on your spelling test. You like your parents going 'Great job, son/daughter!' for getting into that good college or landing that sweet job. You like your girlfriend telling you 'you smell good today'. Literally everyone appreciates some sort of external affirmation for doing something well or cool.
Like pretty much any functioning human being, I like getting external signs of achievement. I do not like Achievement systems in any form I've encountered.
People like external markers that reflect achievement on terms they themselves recognize. For some people, getting your body covered in tattoos is a sign of achievement; other people can look at them and see their personal style and reflect on how much pain they must have had to endure, how much time and money they must have had to sink in, to get their body to look like that. Other people don't care, or even think it looks crappy.
Suppose everyone were given a checklist of Cool Things To Accomplish, and everyone's list contained "Get covered with tattoos," as well as other checkpoints like "buy a Ferrari" and "get your work accepted into an art museum."
Not only will people disagree about which of these things actually sound interesting enough to be worth pursuing, those things already carry their own reward. Nobody needs a sticker certifying that they got a Ferrari, because they've already got the actual Ferrari.
Everyone except possibly crazy hermits wants to impress someone, but everyone also applies some discrimination with respect to who's worth impressing and on what terms they're interested in doing so.
author=Feldschlacht IV
-Humans are social creatures. We like to make our achievements known to others and compare them against others. This is 'bragging'. It's also natural human social behavior and part of the reason why we went from smooshing rocks together to smart phones that tell us the weather in the span of 10,000+ years. Achievements are a way to enjoy even a single player game in a multiplayer context because it allows you to leverage your own accomplishments within that game alongside or against other players.
The animal kingdom is full of social creatures, which compete all the time. Humans have gone from banging rocks together to making smartphones and launching rockets to the moon, but nearly all that progress in capability has occurred in the last few hundred years. The first couple thousand after the end of the Ice Age weren't even sufficient to get us agriculture or the wheel.
The reason that this is anything other than a pointless nitpick is that some forms of competition are simply pointless and don't lead us anywhere, and to the extent that competition has managed to get us somewhere it's because some people find more useful things to compete over. Yeah, the human urge to compete can be sublimated into Candy Crush or catching Pokemon or whatever, but that doesn't mean we have an obligation to encourage it.
Making Stats Matter More (than just hitting shit real hard).
I'm not so much a fan of having stats determine conversation options, because that generally entails that the character neither has a distinct personality developed by the game writers, nor acts as a blank slate which the player can project their own personality onto. Having the character's personality be some intersection of alignment and stat points is, in my opinion, less interesting than either of those options.
...Unless the dialogue options are something in the vein of "There's a fallen tree blocking the path? Let me get that out of the way for you." Aversions of Statistically Speaking can be interesting if they don't impinge ont he characters' personality, but outside of tabletop games, it's hard to implement with any kind of thoroughness.
...Unless the dialogue options are something in the vein of "There's a fallen tree blocking the path? Let me get that out of the way for you." Aversions of Statistically Speaking can be interesting if they don't impinge ont he characters' personality, but outside of tabletop games, it's hard to implement with any kind of thoroughness.
What elements from existing games would you like to see reused?
I like it when the game encourages a measure of exploration. I mean, if you're not going to go around talking to people and checking out the various locations, they might as well not even be there. (Of course, a lot of games make the locations and NPCs boring to investigate, in which case... they might as well not be there.)
The way I see it, there's more to setting than just the history and worldbuilding mechanics and so on. One of the most important components is atmosphere, or character. If wandering around aimlessly exploring or talking to people isn't fun, the atmosphere is poor.
I'm also not usually a fan of difficulty levels. The idea that I'm choosing whether to make things easy or difficult for myself doesn't sit well with me. When I'm challenged, I like it to be because the game presented that challenge organically as part of the narrative, not because I pressed some kind of "make it harder!" button at some point, and when things are easy, I prefer it to be because I'm applying more effort or skill than the designers anticipated, not because I selected an option for the game to cut me slack.
The way I see it, there's more to setting than just the history and worldbuilding mechanics and so on. One of the most important components is atmosphere, or character. If wandering around aimlessly exploring or talking to people isn't fun, the atmosphere is poor.
I'm also not usually a fan of difficulty levels. The idea that I'm choosing whether to make things easy or difficult for myself doesn't sit well with me. When I'm challenged, I like it to be because the game presented that challenge organically as part of the narrative, not because I pressed some kind of "make it harder!" button at some point, and when things are easy, I prefer it to be because I'm applying more effort or skill than the designers anticipated, not because I selected an option for the game to cut me slack.
What elements from existing games would you like to see reused?
Personally, I like being able to crush bosses by powering my characters up beyond what's expected at that point, but I also like being challenged. The ideal situation for me is when I can crush regular enemies and bosses, but get challenge out of facing bonus bosses who're much stronger than the enemies you face in normal gameplay.
Possibly my favorite example is Star Ocean 2, which offers mechanics which the player can use, or flat out exploit, to get way stronger than it's ever necessary to be to win the game. And then it has the bonus dungeon, the Cave of Trials, which practically requires you to have been exploiting those mechanics all along in order to get by, and an event you can trigger which will make the final boss overwhelmingly stronger, to the point that you have to be about as strong as the game will let you get to even stand a chance (or use the Bloody Armor exploit, but that was pure cheese.)
The biggest flaw in its implementation, as far as I was concerned, is that you can plausibly exploit Star Ocean 2's mechanics to a great extent simply by experimentation, whereas finding the bonus content that will actually challenge you if you do so basically requires a game guide.
Possibly my favorite example is Star Ocean 2, which offers mechanics which the player can use, or flat out exploit, to get way stronger than it's ever necessary to be to win the game. And then it has the bonus dungeon, the Cave of Trials, which practically requires you to have been exploiting those mechanics all along in order to get by, and an event you can trigger which will make the final boss overwhelmingly stronger, to the point that you have to be about as strong as the game will let you get to even stand a chance (or use the Bloody Armor exploit, but that was pure cheese.)
The biggest flaw in its implementation, as far as I was concerned, is that you can plausibly exploit Star Ocean 2's mechanics to a great extent simply by experimentation, whereas finding the bonus content that will actually challenge you if you do so basically requires a game guide.
What elements from existing games would you like to see reused?
Personally, I like overworld maps, which help prevent the setting from seeming as tiny as it does when everything is done to scale (the distance from one end of a continent to another, in a game like Final Fantasy X or Star Ocean 3, as measured in number of strides across, is probably smaller than the distance from Brooklyn to the Bronx in New York City.) But on the other hand, having the entire world map include less than three dozen cities, and be circumnavigable in an airship in less than a minute of gameplay, makes everything feel really small again. I think giving the sensation of such a tiny world kind of trivializes the setting. I prefer overworld maps like in the Suikoden games, which are intended to represent only a small fraction of the whole world the game takes place in.
Even if the plot is of global significance (and it shouldn't always have to be,) it doesn't mean that the adventure should actually span the globe.
Even if the plot is of global significance (and it shouldn't always have to be,) it doesn't mean that the adventure should actually span the globe.
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