LUCIDSTILLNESS'S PROFILE

Don't get me wrong, I think mod communities are great, and a testament to how good a game is. What gets me worried though is when people start reverse-engineering the entire game to create something new. In its most extreme case, this violates creative integrity and amounts to the theft of resources and code. This is why all commercial games and software have an agreement against reverse-engineering said software.

With the RPG Maker community, most things are already shared freely. If I come up with some really cool code or graphic resources, I'll probably share them. I'd rather people just play my game as I intended it to be played, or not bother playing it at all. If you change my game to something else, it's not my game anymore.

Well, I would hope that all game-ending bugs would be located through playtesting before the release. I usually ask other people to playtest my stuff to catch things I might has missed. If there are any bugs left that really shut down the game, then I'm just a bad game designer, lol!

But yes, I'd much rather know what the problem is from people. I recall one comment I received when I put together my very first RPG Maker game (reproduced below in full):

"Whoa dude, there is a BIG bug in your game, but I'm not going to tell you what it is because it lets me skip far ahead!"

It took me a full week to find and correct the problem without knowing exactly what it was. The game was actually pretty popular with the community, despite its warts, but it could have been so much better with more accurate feedback.

author=Killer Wolf
I've never knowingly co-opted someone's coding or eventing, despite the fact I get into just about every RM game I download in order to add in a save anywhere feature or fix some minor problem that slipped by the testers.

With earlier generations of Rpg Maker, it always seemed humorous to me that people would try to molebox/encrypt/protect something they created in a program that was illegally translated/distributed. Hello Kettle, this is Pot, I've got some news for you...

If you really want to protect your work, why not use a different maker that is inherently less transparent?

Hmm. I can't say I like the idea of someone reverse-engineering my game to suit their own tastes. It not only disrupts the intended gameplay, but also potentially creates bugs and glitches during said gameplay. I'd much rather just be informed of bugs and gameplay problems so that I can update the game myself, instead of having people tinkering with my events and code without understanding how I went about assembling the system.

I use RPG Maker XP, which has its own built-in dycrption (though I have heard that it is easy enough to circumnavigate). It is of course impossible to stop people from hacking into things if they are dedicated enough, but I'd much rather people tell me what is wrong with my game so that I can fix it myself. I do, after all, know how everything is supposed to fit together better than anyone else.

I never cared for level caps of any sort, really. I'm the sort of person who got a kick out of being able to summon Shiva before you're supposed to in Final Fantasy IX by grinding for a few hours. Ideally, I think a game should be paced well enough that a game doesn't flat out require a large amount of grinding, but which becomes easier with grinding. If a player is clever and lucky, they should be able to deal with most mandatory challenges without grinding, but one does get a certain satisfaction out of plowing through difficult enemies once one is uber-level.

Actually, that's one of the reasons I plan to include a new game plus feature in my game.

Man, I am sick and tired of games which coddle the player like an infant. "Oh please play me, please play me! I have a fishing mini game and auto saves!" Come on! Final Fantasy VII? A toddler could finish that game without breaking a sweat. Final Fantasy XII? A game that plays itself seems like the ultimate convenience, doesn't it? Give me a break.

Now you might be saying, "But Lucid, a game should be fun and accessible for anyone." NOT WHERE I COME FROM! If you want a game that anyone can pick up and play, stick to Pong! That's my motto! As far as I'm concerned, if you pick up a game, you'd better be prepared to follow through. Get into the level grinding, get into the hair pulling battles, get out a pen an paper and DRAW THAT MAP! There should be blood and tears. A game should beat up the player, challenging their worth as a human being. If you can't handle the heat, get out of the fire. Hang your head in shame, because the game BEAT YOU! BEAT YOU LIKE A RUG!

Okay, enough of that. Obviously, anyone can make a game difficult for the wrong reasons; imbalanced challenges, dull repetitive gameplay, poorly thought out mechanics, etc. Making a game that is well designed, challenging, AND holds the player's interest from start to finish is no easy task. After all, many commercial games do fail at some or all of these goals. As independent game designers, we don't have to worry about sales or a target audience, unless one wants to win a popularity contest, so our games will generally reflect whatever combination of the above traits we like.

Personally, I like a good-looking difficult game with a lot of depth (though not as difficult as my earlier hyperbole would suggest). I use Atlus games as a modern-day model. Digital Devil Saga, my favourite console RPG, has difficult and at times punishing gameplay, but it's story is so interesting and its gameplay is so challenging that I couldn't help but want to see things through to the end. To me, it's not too important to make things easy for the player, as long as the player feels like what they are doing means something. If a player grinds off of monsters to gain a cool new skill so they can finally best a powerful boss, that to me is fun. On the other hand, if the game hands me everything on a silver platter and sends me one easy battle after another that requires little or no effort on my part, my enthusiasm for the game is going to waiver no matter how well paced or polished it is.

I'm not saying this design philosophy and style of gameplay is for everyone, and there are plenty of other ways to keep player interest besides the occasionally punishing challenge. It is, after all, your game set to your tastes, and there is no wrong way to design a game as long as someone finds it fun.


....LIKE A RUG!