RAMSHACKIN'S PROFILE

author=Craze
>Limited energy, like in Diablocide. You can freely swap in battle, which is essential because everybody only has a limited amount of energy for skill usage, and EVERY ability costs energy.

>Friend-based XP. I have yet to use this, but I really want to (maybe after my busy summer). Basically, you gain XP in pairs -- Cloud and Terra is one pair, then Cloud and Agnes, Cloud and Jessica, Cloud and Kain, Terra and Agnes, Terra and Jessica, Terra and Kain, Agnes and Jessica, Agnes and Kain, Jessica and Kain, as well as everybody else! Each XP pair can only level up to 3 or 5 or so. A character's sum of their friend rankings is their overall level. You absolutely MUST level up everybody with everybody else if you want to get stronger.

>Fatigue. I don't like this one as much because I'm not so much a fan of penalties anymore. I much prefer to reward good play than punish the player for playing the game they way they want to! Regardless, fatigue just means that characters get tired each turn they spend in battle. After a total of 50 turns or so (across any number of battles), their stats are reduced. After another 50 turns, they're reduced more drastically. You'll have to let them rest and use other characters for a while in order to get them back into full health.

>For a more abstract game like Edifice, forced random departures/arrivals. On floor three, the RNG rolls Cyan into your party. On floor five, Carmilla says goodbye (until she decides to join again on floor twelve). The game would intelligently keep your party greater than or equal to <max battle members +1> so you always had a little leeway (except maybe on Hard difficulty, it wouldn't give you that extra character buffer).

These are some good ideas. I think limited energy is something that works well.

Friend-based XP sounds interesting, especially if the battles and story were themed around friendship. Like if characters were relatively useless on their own, but when working with a partner they become much stronger. The characters can take on entirely different roles based on who they team up with. For example, Alice's ability is to make people wet. Friends or foes. Brian's novice lightning spell doesn't do much damage, but if he hits a wet enemy, watch out. Cathy's healing mist is amateurish, but if used on a wet ally, it becomes a pro's heal spell. This is making me want to start a new project!

author=Pizza
Another thing to keep in mind based on that item is that different people will usually form different party compositions based on who they like best. For example, look at any Tales of title and you'll see that the party comp varies from person to person, with everybody usually keeping the same 4 characters through the game. This is basically the situation you described, but at least as a writer or a designer you know that there aren't characters going totally unused.

Of course, I guess the real way to avoid that would be to make sure there's no dominant strategy, no party comp that was the best in every situation. But that would be pretty difficult.

Just my two cents on that point.

I'd be fine with that. People can stick with the same four, but each player has a different four. No wasted characters. Though the balance has to be tuned to avoid having a best four, which ain't easy.

author=Crystalgate

Repeatedly failing to apply a condition due to chance is frustrating
Especially when there is no indication that the boss was just straight up immune.

I don't get why so many insist on giving status effect a failure chance on cannon fodder enemies. I have no problem with skills failing when it makes sense, like skeletons being immune to poison. However, when a sleep spell randomly fails against a cannon fodder bat, that's a clear "status effects are not actually meant to be used" signal to me.

With the game I'm working on, I'm trying this approach: status effects are 100% or immune, and immune is rare. Bosses and stronger enemies have resistances to different effects, which reduces the duration. A boss may only be poisoned for a single turn, while a fodder enemy suffers 10 turns of poison from the same skill.

I've been making games for over a decade. Now every few years, I go back and play my old games. This year, I decided to make a list of everything I've learned, good or bad, from my past games.

What concepts were so simple even 13 year old Ramshackin got it right? What mistakes kept being made despite repeatedly watching play testers run into them? Here's my list:

If there is a way to fully heal, player's will always rely on it, no matter how inconvenient
One game featured a coliseum where the party was fully healed after each battle. When a player needed a heal, they would leave where they were, walk to the coliseum, fight a battle, then walk back. This was fun for no one. But was too effective not to do.

If 4 characters can battle at a time, only 4 characters will be used
This comes in two flavors: large number of characters to recruit to the 4 man party, or large party of freely swappable characters, where only 4 can battle at a time. Having not finished a game of the second type, I'll use Edifice as my example. My party always consisted of the same characters. Craze must have known this when making the game, because there are battles that force you to use a random party.

This problem compounds when unused characters don't receive updated equipment or battle experience. I thought I could be clever by making side quests that required a certain character. It just meant I spent time on content that will never be played.

Defend/Guard option is never chosen
Some games make guard more enticing by offering a side benefit, like MP recovery. It ends up being the free MP heal command. Other games will force a battle with an enemy that charges, followed by a strong attack. The best battles aren't often inspired by the question, "How do I make this menu command useful?"

Don't wait until level 20 to introduce the interesting mechanics
This is the recurring theme of my games. The interesting skills, original mechanics, and character building come later in the game. I always have this need to ease players into the game by starting off with the generic RPG systems. Player's interest is gone by the time the game gets good.

Enemies should be more than bags of HP
Enemies never did anything interesting in my early games. No threat. Nothing to react to. The challenge was how fast you can kill them.

Repeatedly failing to apply a condition due to chance is frustrating
Especially when there is no indication that the boss was just straight up immune.

Players use money on combat; Aesthetics and minigames are second priority
I had a great idea. There would be a costume shop. Players could change the main character's graphic through buying all sorts of outfits. It would be awesome.

No one bought anything. All money went towards making the party better in combat. The only exception was towards the end of the game when the player was overflowing with money. And then, it wasn't to wear the outfits. It was for the completionist need to unlock everything.

Make sure the player knows where they can go
50 side quests aren't important when the player doesn't know where to go to start them. Maps are best when the exits are clear. I should have known my mapping was bad when I had to tell every player, "By the way, you can enter a different room by going here."

Don't underestimate giving the player mementos
This was one of my favorite parts of my earlier games. Each adventure would award you with a memento. A little item with no use outside of flavor text reminding you what you did to earn it. There is something satisfying about scrolling through the list near the end of the game.

Jumping can completely change the way players view the game world
A simple feature that opens up new opportunities for map design.

Enemy encounters are more enjoyable when there is a story behind them
Random encounters? Not too exciting. An enemy with personality and motive and a reason for the player to fight them? Much better.

One thing I just realized I liked about my earlier games: random encounters were unusual. Scripted encounters were the majority of battles.

The characters you interact with can really drive the game
Extending the previous to allies and NPCs. Sometimes friends want to play my old games. It's not because they loved the epic battle against the evil dragon. It's because they want to go back and once again meet the wacky characters we created when we were young.

Don't underestimate the driving force behind "who will I meet next?" and "I want to know more about him."

tl;dr version

• I designed this perfect MMORPG game. You can be everything you want to be. You can be a turtle or ice elemental, it doesnt matter. You maybe in a vegan faction or a animal rights faction or a asian faction.

• Damage is your damage and all damages are random in this game

• you can be a level 5138 player while other players are around 100 level. That means you are 51 times stronger than a level 100 player.

• in this game everything is random. Even a stupid worm may kill you. and when you die, you lose a level and if you are free player you cannot play the game until next day.

• Damage Calculation: In this game damages are random. You will deal a damage between 1 and 1999. Enemy have 100 felee you have 600 hit enemy have a felee rate 1/7.

I released Dego this year. Probably should have mentioned that earlier.

Glad to hear you are updating your review for the final version!