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How do you make random encounters feel welcome?
I think what makes random encounters annoying to a lot of people are:
I think if you want to make random encounters more palatable, then here's a list of things you can think of:
- Unwanted grinding
- Annoyance
- The overly repetitive introduction of battles
- Lack of pacing... they just want to get to the next objective already! too many battles (encounter rate is too high)
- Random encounters are everywhere, even inside castles that should be safe from monsters! make sense, people (consistency)
- the enemies are too difficult (consider scaling down the difficulty of enemies)
I think if you want to make random encounters more palatable, then here's a list of things you can think of:
- Restricting random encounters to certain zones like Pokemon does. This means that if people don't want a random encounter, they don't have to go looking for one. At the same time, sometimes you have to go through grass to get somewhere, but at least you can anticipate and plan your route around that. plus you also feel like a boss for dodging grass by doing some cool "cliff tricks"
- Obviously making the encounter rate lower rather than higher.
- varying up the monsters A LOT. the reason why a lot of people dislike random encounters is sometimes just because they're fighting the same monster again and again and it's BORING. maybe if you give them a lot of different monsters that will make it more interesting.
- Obviously by increasing the interestingness of the battles themselves. this is probably achieved by making certain skills more useful in certain situations than others, in order to create a sense of interesting decisions and strategy. things that can easily make up for this are: elemental strengths/weaknesses; the use of status effects that actually work; not over-depending on items; making battles long enough to be interesting but short enough to not be a drag; including interesting events while you're battling to keep things spicy. maybe even dialogue and stuff, idk
- You could include an encounter meter to tell you when a monster is coming, so people don't get as annoyed when they do. But I kind of find it weird and lacks immersion sometimes so just find out if it fits the game or not.
- You could consider using moving encounters, but you have to be really careful that it's not just a dodging contest. in my experience it's not very fun and it just detracts from the experience because most monsters in this arena have useless AI or it just lacks suspense being chased by these things. sometimes it's downright laughable taunting a rat from afar. not in a good way, though.
- making the noise/animation for the transition not so jarring. i mean, you don't have to *slide* into the action, but a nice playful transition and cool sound that won't get annoying are good things.
FOUR STARS...for what ??
Monster encounters that make sense.
Yeah, I mean people don't make things exciting anymore. I'm tired of fighting the same old slimes.
Slimes with machine guns - now that's exciting.
Slimes with machine guns - now that's exciting.
Hero's Realm Review
Thanks for replying. I'll probably sound incompetent in my replies, criticizing a game as good as this, because I feel a bit inferior, but I'll try to articulate my thoughts and the reasoning behind my review as best as possible.
Yeah, I wasn't so annoyed at the fact that the world felt like a template world, but it would have been nice if flavour were to break things up here and there. It's such a huge world though that I can't imagine it would have been easy making sense of how all the locations relate to each other, and creating a general logical flow through towns and cities, and the politics between each town, so maybe the lightweight relationship between the locations worked best. It's just that sometimes I felt things were pasted in purely for gameplay purposes, and that's fine by all means, but maybe it's just not my cup of tea.
I'm pretty much the opposite of you, I only started really playing jRPGs after 1999 so I have experience with those titles influenced by the classics, and not necessarily having played the classics themselves. It's like being part of a generation that enjoys the new Star Trek and asks, "Wait, did Star Trek really come out in the 60s?" But the things that I connotate the jRPG era of the early Final Fantasies is that of unforgiving gameplay and tedious stretches of battles that serve no purpose but to level you up, kind of like modern day MMORPGs. Everyone seems to praise Final Fantasy's storyline though, and from my experience with the series, they're right. The game created a fine world that was very dissimilar to our own to explore and wonder at and marvel at the various sights and wonders. The main thing to wonder at in Hero's Realm is the vast scale of the world and the locations within, but at some points it felt too close to the bare gameplay mechanics to fully immerse myself in the world.
So... I believe I didn't really answer your question fully. The game principles I don't necessarily like from the jRPG era of old, flaws that have only been emulated and magnified in modern jRPGs. The general "explore / get into battles / some variation on turn-based combat" formula of the console-type era that was typefied by the repeating of this cycle over and over again veiled in a quest structure. Dungeons had puzzles that were more of a trial-and-error option than I preferred, and were mostly a construct to support the setting around them, instead of being challenging puzzles themselves. Rather than using status effects and other time-consuming battles to create interesting and engaging resource management, it tended to feel like more of a time-spent affair that was a filler between locations and story nodes. I'm not saying this about your game, however, but I am saying that these flaws that were inherent in older games because of antiquated game design can be overcome by modern principles.
However, some of the principles of old school jRPGs I am still a firm believer in, such as not holding the player's hand as much. Letting them explore a free world for themselves and discover what is inside it, instead of being railroaded along a linear path. The emphasis on length, and depth of world-building, rather than providing a Hollywood-esque action-filled popcorn-selling seat-filler, having a slow-building story with cute characters and a lightweight tone, and an ending that is worth paying the cost of a slow start to the gameplay. The emphasis on resource management and skill management is perhaps best balanced in old school RPGs, where elements are re-used (as in Hero's Realm) to provide as much deterministic gameplay elements as possible. In modern games, elements tend to be used once or twice and then discarded, as if it wasn't thought well through, but one thing jRPGs did well was consistency.
I feel like I'm babbling, but I'll talk about pacing now. That last comment was mostly made because I was more in want of important plot moments, especially during the late ending, to be revealed slower, and to show the epicness of the events that occurred. It wasn't really a major point. Most plot points in Hero's Realm are delivered via the NPCs because the protagonists are silent, so I can't blame you for not including character monologues or anything. If anything it's the frequency of the battles and exploration that broke up how fast the story was told, and I'm not exactly sure how to solve that. The story was lightweight, though, as you said, and it was sufficient throughout.
Anyway I gotta have dinner. I'd think about it more, but quite frankly I feel too inexperienced sometimes to comment. It's just generally how I felt, is all. If you need me to clarify further, I'll try.
Yeah, I wasn't so annoyed at the fact that the world felt like a template world, but it would have been nice if flavour were to break things up here and there. It's such a huge world though that I can't imagine it would have been easy making sense of how all the locations relate to each other, and creating a general logical flow through towns and cities, and the politics between each town, so maybe the lightweight relationship between the locations worked best. It's just that sometimes I felt things were pasted in purely for gameplay purposes, and that's fine by all means, but maybe it's just not my cup of tea.
I'm pretty much the opposite of you, I only started really playing jRPGs after 1999 so I have experience with those titles influenced by the classics, and not necessarily having played the classics themselves. It's like being part of a generation that enjoys the new Star Trek and asks, "Wait, did Star Trek really come out in the 60s?" But the things that I connotate the jRPG era of the early Final Fantasies is that of unforgiving gameplay and tedious stretches of battles that serve no purpose but to level you up, kind of like modern day MMORPGs. Everyone seems to praise Final Fantasy's storyline though, and from my experience with the series, they're right. The game created a fine world that was very dissimilar to our own to explore and wonder at and marvel at the various sights and wonders. The main thing to wonder at in Hero's Realm is the vast scale of the world and the locations within, but at some points it felt too close to the bare gameplay mechanics to fully immerse myself in the world.
So... I believe I didn't really answer your question fully. The game principles I don't necessarily like from the jRPG era of old, flaws that have only been emulated and magnified in modern jRPGs. The general "explore / get into battles / some variation on turn-based combat" formula of the console-type era that was typefied by the repeating of this cycle over and over again veiled in a quest structure. Dungeons had puzzles that were more of a trial-and-error option than I preferred, and were mostly a construct to support the setting around them, instead of being challenging puzzles themselves. Rather than using status effects and other time-consuming battles to create interesting and engaging resource management, it tended to feel like more of a time-spent affair that was a filler between locations and story nodes. I'm not saying this about your game, however, but I am saying that these flaws that were inherent in older games because of antiquated game design can be overcome by modern principles.
However, some of the principles of old school jRPGs I am still a firm believer in, such as not holding the player's hand as much. Letting them explore a free world for themselves and discover what is inside it, instead of being railroaded along a linear path. The emphasis on length, and depth of world-building, rather than providing a Hollywood-esque action-filled popcorn-selling seat-filler, having a slow-building story with cute characters and a lightweight tone, and an ending that is worth paying the cost of a slow start to the gameplay. The emphasis on resource management and skill management is perhaps best balanced in old school RPGs, where elements are re-used (as in Hero's Realm) to provide as much deterministic gameplay elements as possible. In modern games, elements tend to be used once or twice and then discarded, as if it wasn't thought well through, but one thing jRPGs did well was consistency.
I feel like I'm babbling, but I'll talk about pacing now. That last comment was mostly made because I was more in want of important plot moments, especially during the late ending, to be revealed slower, and to show the epicness of the events that occurred. It wasn't really a major point. Most plot points in Hero's Realm are delivered via the NPCs because the protagonists are silent, so I can't blame you for not including character monologues or anything. If anything it's the frequency of the battles and exploration that broke up how fast the story was told, and I'm not exactly sure how to solve that. The story was lightweight, though, as you said, and it was sufficient throughout.
Anyway I gotta have dinner. I'd think about it more, but quite frankly I feel too inexperienced sometimes to comment. It's just generally how I felt, is all. If you need me to clarify further, I'll try.
Let's work on your game descriptions!
@kidde13: There are a lot of grammar and spelling mistakes. Your most common errors are incorrect sentence structure and incorrect capitalization. You also have some minor spelling errors. I will post a revised version.
You need to expand it with notes about your gameplay, characters, setting, story, and other miscellanea before it becomes an actual game description.
~~~
@JkrloxtheReaper Here is a revised version of the description. In general, you use too many run-on sentences with poor structure that makes them lose their meaning. There is also a lot of improper capitalization ("He" is hardly capitalized unless at the beginning of a sentence or referring to a deity of some sort) and lack of formatting.
author=kidde13
I bet that you have heard the story more than a thousand times. A fable about a brave and gallant knight who accepted a quest to save the land from its various monsters. But... I doubt you have ever heard of what happens while the knight fights his battles? Let me tell you the story of a trader who sees your regular knight from a different perspective.
Caution: This game may contain low level offensive language. Recommended for gamers aged 15+. This is my second attempt at making an RPG Maker game. I hope you like it.
You need to expand it with notes about your gameplay, characters, setting, story, and other miscellanea before it becomes an actual game description.
~~~
@JkrloxtheReaper Here is a revised version of the description. In general, you use too many run-on sentences with poor structure that makes them lose their meaning. There is also a lot of improper capitalization ("He" is hardly capitalized unless at the beginning of a sentence or referring to a deity of some sort) and lack of formatting.
author=JkrloxTheReaper
History
"...and then he walked to the edge of the abyss, and with the desire to give end to his existence, jumped into the dark"
When he entered into the thick fog, Joseph recalled part of the story that his grandfather had told him when he was just a mere kid. It was a fairytale like no other. Perhaps the mysterious letter that he had received days after his grandfather's funeral had made him remember many things that he had forgotten with the passing of the years. For a moment he thought that he might find many of the answers he had sought for so long. His thoughts turned to the place where he had grown up, the Black Rose Orphanage, located just outside of town and had been abandoned for years.
Maybe there, Joseph will find the secrets behind his strange amnesia, and the meaning of the mysterious book that he had received, along with the letter from his grandfather, a very old and dark fairytale called "The Lonely Prince".
A Survival Horror Fairytale
Characters
Joseph Walker: A 26-year-old man tormented by visions and voices, that whisper the same words always: "Come back with us, O! lonely prince..."
The fairy tale is divided into several chapters, each of them with their specific characters and enemies. This fairytale has a dark and sinister atmosphere in conjunction with disturbing sounds and music, in order to create the most intense experience possible... and, of course, a lot of deadly traps.
Features
"Escaping/Hiding"
Joseph can’t fight the enemy directly, so you must use the surrounding environment to escape or hide from your enemies, and when the time comes, you must fight them in a specific place.
"Pursuit Mode" and "Physical Stamina Meter"
There are two types of enemies in this fairy tale. Both of them will activate the "Pursuit Mode", a mode that forces you to escape from your enemy or they will catch and kill you.
During this mode the "Physical Stamina Meter" should be your top priority. During the "Pursuit Mode", your endurance will decrease rapidly, causing Joseph's speed to decline, and forcing him to enter into a recovery state. During this short period of time, Joseph can’t move, so you will become an easy target for your persecutors.
"Stalker Mode", "Predator Mode"
In "Stalker Mode", the enemy will follow you for a certain period of time. It is also much easier escape or hide from him, however, this doesn’t mean that the enemy can’t catch you. On the other hand, in "Predator mode", the enemy will follow you until he catches you, so hiding from it will be useless. However, this mode applies only to enemies like bosses, which categorizes these enemies as the most difficult of the story.
"Mental Health Meter"
The game's UI shows a meter for Joseph's mental health that will be affected with almost every action you make during the course of the story. If this meter reaches zero, you will die.
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