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The Envelope: An Improvised Live Text Adventure
Zero to Sixty - Musings on the Cancers Besetting Amateur RPGs and Thoughts About Potential Cures
This isn't really about the players. Yes, the problem is that they suck and don't play games (this is why Play Something = good idea). But as a designer, you can't change that. So it's up to you to overcome the obstacle.
RPGs take time and love and all that may be true, and can work fine in a game. But you have to keep people interested from the start, and you usually do that by being an all-around good game designer and establishing your atmosphere properly.
But "Oh, just grit your teeth for now, it'll get good later!" is wrong, even if the pro games do it. If it's good later, it should be good now, too. There's no reason it can't. And this isn't about battles and options of strategy and whatever, I'm talking about everything: music, puzzles, where you put your treasure chests and what you have in them, character development, etc.
RPGs take time and love and all that may be true, and can work fine in a game. But you have to keep people interested from the start, and you usually do that by being an all-around good game designer and establishing your atmosphere properly.
But "Oh, just grit your teeth for now, it'll get good later!" is wrong, even if the pro games do it. If it's good later, it should be good now, too. There's no reason it can't. And this isn't about battles and options of strategy and whatever, I'm talking about everything: music, puzzles, where you put your treasure chests and what you have in them, character development, etc.
The Forum Game ^ < v
How about a Play Something Day?
How about making this monthly (second Friday of the month or something catchy)? Or at least bimonthly. Just have a day where everyone sits down and plays one of the recently-released games that they've been meaning to play but just haven't gotten around to. Then everyone makes an effort to just post what game they played and a brief review of their impressions. I mean, writing ONE brief review shouldn't take more than 10 or 15 minutes. Or 5 minutes. "The graphics were great but the battles were a little too difficult in the first area, then got too easy" would be enough.
Actually, the review should also be written to attract other players if you like the game, so it should be short so that they actually read it (shorter than this post).
It should be play SOMETHING, not play everything.
And if the game doesn't make you want to keep playing, just jot down what you didn't like and (optionally) move on to your second choice.
Personally I could really use a day where it's like "Okay, get over whatever lame excuse you have and play that damn game," and I think a lot of other people are like that too. And since there are a lot of games I should play, it should be frequent enough to not make people feel like they need to play everything, but not too frequent or people will stop caring.
Actually, the review should also be written to attract other players if you like the game, so it should be short so that they actually read it (shorter than this post).
It should be play SOMETHING, not play everything.
And if the game doesn't make you want to keep playing, just jot down what you didn't like and (optionally) move on to your second choice.
Personally I could really use a day where it's like "Okay, get over whatever lame excuse you have and play that damn game," and I think a lot of other people are like that too. And since there are a lot of games I should play, it should be frequent enough to not make people feel like they need to play everything, but not too frequent or people will stop caring.
Zero to Sixty - Musings on the Cancers Besetting Amateur RPGs and Thoughts About Potential Cures
Obviously, this is a really complicated issue, or else people would be making good games left and right.
You are absolutely right: when I play a game, you have very little time to win me over. But you're making a bad correlation between game length and "time to really get into it." The important point is the intro. It's the same for all entertainment media: the hook. I don't read many books because I'm too lazy to, but whenever I randomly pick up a book and read the first sentence, a lot of times I'm completely sucked in and read it cover to cover.
Movies. TV shows. Novels. Short stories. Games. All methods of storytelling and they all abide by the same general rules. You need to hit hard with something people want to see. With games, like movies, you're given a number of options here. Fast paced action scenes are a possibility, but other things like a really scenic intro movie, or simply just going straight into the gameplay works, too.
Which brings up the other problem. Not everyone even downloads games to try them at all (Example: me). That's part of the point of the whole "Play Something" idea, but there's more to it than that. Making a really good forum post to advertise your game is more important than it should be.
You are absolutely right: when I play a game, you have very little time to win me over. But you're making a bad correlation between game length and "time to really get into it." The important point is the intro. It's the same for all entertainment media: the hook. I don't read many books because I'm too lazy to, but whenever I randomly pick up a book and read the first sentence, a lot of times I'm completely sucked in and read it cover to cover.
Movies. TV shows. Novels. Short stories. Games. All methods of storytelling and they all abide by the same general rules. You need to hit hard with something people want to see. With games, like movies, you're given a number of options here. Fast paced action scenes are a possibility, but other things like a really scenic intro movie, or simply just going straight into the gameplay works, too.
Which brings up the other problem. Not everyone even downloads games to try them at all (Example: me). That's part of the point of the whole "Play Something" idea, but there's more to it than that. Making a really good forum post to advertise your game is more important than it should be.
Phase Focused Tactics Gaemz
I think it's interesting that every dark, moody character in Fire Emblem is an assassin. I've only played 6-10, but I can't think of a single exception to that. Even the shamans are usually pretty normal. MAYBE the shaman girl in 6.
I don't really know if Fire Emblem is better for older people, though. I guess I can sort of see it. The whole strategy games thing is sort of an older person genre, and FE is pretty hardcore strategy. More patience and the ability to learn from failure, I guess.
I don't really know if Fire Emblem is better for older people, though. I guess I can sort of see it. The whole strategy games thing is sort of an older person genre, and FE is pretty hardcore strategy. More patience and the ability to learn from failure, I guess.
What's important?
I totally hijacked this thread, didn't I? Oh well, it wasn't very good anyway.
It really doesn't seem like I'm an RPG person, does it? And yet somehow I am. Maybe I'm just anti-traditionalist. And looking at the list I made of every commercial RPG I've beaten (only ~25, sadly), there are maybe 4 that could be considered traditional. I never had a Playstation and we only had one Super Nintendo RPG, so I guess I didn't start out on the traditional like everyone else did.
Oh well. Thanks guys for helping me on my spiritual journey! I'm gonna go out to a canyon and get high and see if I can envision damage numbers in the sky or something.
It really doesn't seem like I'm an RPG person, does it? And yet somehow I am. Maybe I'm just anti-traditionalist. And looking at the list I made of every commercial RPG I've beaten (only ~25, sadly), there are maybe 4 that could be considered traditional. I never had a Playstation and we only had one Super Nintendo RPG, so I guess I didn't start out on the traditional like everyone else did.
Oh well. Thanks guys for helping me on my spiritual journey! I'm gonna go out to a canyon and get high and see if I can envision damage numbers in the sky or something.
What's important?
Yeah, I guess what's important to me is being able to go straight through the game fighting everything exactly once. Of course then you have the games that just have too many of the same battles and I start skipping them because I'm bored of fighting and end up too weak anyway.
In my opinion, Chrono Trigger is the only perfect RPG that exists to date. And it's all the little things like the pacing and the absolutely wonderful damage quantities that make it so good. That isn't relevant to this post, I just wanted to say that.
I guess my problem is that I just need a battle system that doesn't completely bore me. But most systems do. And that's probably the reason I hate random encounters, because with random encounters there's no "light at the end of the tunnel," and there will ALWAYS be more battles to fight. With nonrandoms you can just fight until all the enemies are dead and move on.
In my opinion, Chrono Trigger is the only perfect RPG that exists to date. And it's all the little things like the pacing and the absolutely wonderful damage quantities that make it so good. That isn't relevant to this post, I just wanted to say that.
I guess my problem is that I just need a battle system that doesn't completely bore me. But most systems do. And that's probably the reason I hate random encounters, because with random encounters there's no "light at the end of the tunnel," and there will ALWAYS be more battles to fight. With nonrandoms you can just fight until all the enemies are dead and move on.
Phase Focused Tactics Gaemz
I love Fire Emblem but I haven't had the chance to play many other strategy RPGs. Do any of these play like Fire Emblem with the whole "Finite number of enemies, no mission replay" aspect intact? For some reason I can't really enjoy them unless every experience point is as precious as diamonds.
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