ISRIERI'S PROFILE

Speaking as a player and not as a designer here. I've played games where you can save anywhere and at any time, alongside games that allowed you to only save in "safe zones" like towns, and games that let you save at save points sprinkled throughout the game. These to me are the most common methods of saving in RPGs.

I prefer the Dragon Quest style the best because it makes the most sense. I hate it when games coddle me* and one way of doing that is by punishing death (Death = Failure btw) with a slap on the wrist and put back at your previous save. Handling death and saving in RPGs is really tricky, and I think that Dragon Quest handled it best. Losing half your gold and being sent back to the place you last saved without losing the progress you made.

1) It makes sense to lose half your gold because you died. So someone's gotta revive you.
2) If that doesn't float your boat. You can just say that losing half your wealth is good incentive to not die. Dying sucks anyway.
3) It presents the player with an ultimatum. If you don't want to lose half your gold or needed it for something, you can always just reset your save and pretend the death never happened, or you just deal with it. Most people would probably go for the former option, but it's the choice that's important.

That's enough of a punishment. Because dying still isn't that big of a deal. It's not like you have limited continues or crap like that. But it's still enough of a repercussion that it makes going into dungeons a little more exciting and the threat of death is actually a tangible threat. Rather than a "meh whatever."

*That is, when it's painfully obvious the game's catering to the player.

author=Darkflamewolf
Or..have them there for ambience, but don't have them say anything. Like in FFXII where cities were packed with people, but only the important ones had talking bubbles above their heads.

Even then there were too many NPCs with unimportant dialogue. I made to avoid every NPC that I could get away with while playing it. Just remove the filler NPCs unless they have something particularly witty to say. That said, I know how hard it is to have them always say relevant things. ;_;

Fewer NPCs means more dialogue you can make for them. If you only have like, 6 guys per town or some single digit number, you could even give them names and work on making those few more memorable with dialogue that changes as the game goes on.

I'm still curious as to what SpoonyBard would have to say about this one.

Ark, you didn't stop the world from ending I did. : |

OH WAIT YES YOU DID.
ALL I DID WAS SHOOT MAGIC THINGS.

Boswer's Castl is piss easy for me. But I can easily see how it doesn't fit well in world 1. It was supposed to emulate the world 8 levels and castles from the original SMB anyway. I like Bowser bookends too, but if messes up game progression then screw it up the &#(#@. I wouldn't move Tree Base for the reason Hali stated. The SMB3 Bowser was the only thing I didn't like about the level. (I don't like bosses)

Castle Notsobad is not so bad. Maybe switch it with that? It would be more memorable a level that way.