LOCKEZ'S PROFILE

post=156529
In the latter case, once the player beats an enemy party once it is an entirely solved, i.e. boring, problem in most RPGs. In the former case, the player might still get something out of correcting their own mistakes the second or third time around, or figuring out a better way later on if they come back with more tools.

It's definitely true that this sort of range of outcomes can make the same battle be a little more interesting multiple times. And thank God for that, because the feeling of pointless repetition is something I despise. But the randomness of enemy actions can do the same thing, if done well. And even with both factors at play, the same group of enemies will still be less interesting each time you fight them. After a few battles, they will be reduced to button mashing no matter what.

In my game, my solution is more direct. I'm just never going to present the player with the same battle twice.

I started to do this type of self-evaluation for my own game, then quickly got really annoyed at how bad the beginning of my game is compared to the rest of it. So I'm going to do a lot of redesigning up through the end of the second dungeon, then try this week's Doing It!.

Aside from all being really simple things that plenty of RM games already use, these are not necessarily good ideas. They all have downsides as well as upsides. It's a matter of what type of game you're trying to make.

For instance, one obvious downside to the level scaling is that moving to the next dungeon increases your XP gain without increasing the difficulty of the enemies. If you make the XP gain scale as well, then the player loses their main motivation to move onward, and is encouraged to grind as long as possible.

I'm not sure I've ever seen an RPG that didn't reward exploration. Almost every dungeon in most games has treasure chests in out of the way places. But an obvious downside of doing this - the reason first person shooters and action games tend not to do it - is that it significantly slows the game down. There is something to be said for moving on with the game and getting to the next dungeon or quest or cut scene. It's a lot more exciting.

Extra randomness in battles can make normal battles - which tend to get repeated multiple times per dungeon - continue to be potentially dangerous later in the dungeon if the dice roll against your favor. But they also can make those battles be potentially too dangerous early in the dungeon if the dice roll against your favor, or make battles be too easy if the dice roll consistently in your favor. Randomness against bosses is often really deadly - if you miss too many times in a row, or if the boss gets too many crits in a row, then you're toast no matter what you do. There's nothing more annoying than getting a game over despite doing everything perfectly.

I'm sure there's a downside to touch encounters. Hmm. Well, for one thing, it adds a reflex-based mechanism to your game, which will irritate many players who play RPGs specifically because they don't require reflexes or coordination.

Obviously these changes have benefits too. Whether or not the benefits make up for the problems is up for debate and will vary from game to game.

Wolf was not saying that fonts require all this, he was responding to point out that making a blanket statement of "Anything special that needs to be done prior to play can be described in readme.txt. Screw those that don't RTFM." can cause some serious problems in practice.

I will point out though that the fonts folder is a system folder, and Windows will not let you open or modify it without flashing warnings that you could potentially damage your computer.

The complaints about battle frequency make me sad, because I went out of my way to add a minimum number of steps per battle, which is always at least 20 and often over 30. I was under the impression that was very reasonable, and loads better than random battles in most RM games. Was I mistaken?