JABBO'S PROFILE

I've never been one to judge a game by its story (seriously, if a game doesn't have random encounters, I will play it all the way through, regardless of how god awful every other aspect of the game is), but I think there's something to be said about atmosphere in an RPG world. The characters and how the world feels are probably more important in an RPG than the story itself, and when you have extraordinarily boring characters and nondescript towns with bland NPCs, it distances the player from the game and they get the sense that the creator didn't even try.

I mean I don't think my personal non-gameplay standards are too high (and I haven't been here long enough to know how high everyone else's are). I just like to get the sense that the characters are people, not just heroes, and that the author did more to create them than just write out:

Class: SWORDSMAN
Motivation: WANTS TO SAVE THE WORLD

or

Class: THIEF
Motivation: WANTS TO PROTECT

author=WIP link=topic=1336.msg20301#msg20301 date=1213643844
These aren't indie games.

Wait, what? Have I had the definition of indie game wrong for years now? 'Cause that would suck.

She didn't see the second page. And so no one gets skipped, totally double rate... in Roman numerals.

iamnot you get a V/X because I have no idea what it is.
And YDS is good but gets minus two for making me sad every time I look at it (poor cute little orange), VII/X.

Sorry, I always write too much. It's a problem I have, so I'll try to be concise (so people actually read what I say).

- Spillover damage exists in RPGs but it's too unpredictable to be used as an argument for anything. Heavy hitters that deal 50% of the monster's health at once get no spillover, so spillover is only an issue when the conditions are right.

- "Any damage less than X is reduced to zero" is in a similar vein to the Att - Def situation. It's just that most games don't have these mechanics in place, probably because players don't like to *chink* when they attack. So if you put them in you're adequately doing stat differentiation (ta-da!). Whether this is fun is another question.

- "Wasting one attack" honestly shouldn't be relevant except in boss battles, which you're likely going to be fighting more than once anyway. One attack will rarely decide a battle anyway, regardless of its strength.

- Healers: true. I can't think of a counterargument. Of course if everyone's constantly on dire straits, your healers are all going to approach middle ground anyway. They need to heal enough to get people back up, but also often enough so that people don't die. Slow = Death and Fast = Heals that are too weak.

- Max HP should go up to show progress: very true. My personal system isn't turn-based, though, and being able to have a point of reference for just how much damage a character received on the fly will be helpful to the player. In turn-based systems, I guess you pretty much have to.

- Healing item efficacy: it's a personal opinion that all healing items and spells should heal percentage HP instead of straight values. Or at least a hybrid (10% + 20). Maybe it's just me, but I never use better healing items until I have a lot of them (when I can afford a lot of them). So do you really need to be using Elixirs in the late game? You have 99 of them, anyway, so they may as well be Potions. Not really a solid argument, just food for thought.

- Fun: good point. Personally when I play a game and have the option of modifying HP or Def, I'm annoyed because I don't know which one to pick. Other people might be the opposite. Should I put things in my game that I find aren't fun, simply because other people find them fun? It's a difficult question.

Hot dogs and baseball for some reason.