RINE'S PROFILE

To be fair, making your own version of a game is how a lot of things get improved upon. However, directly ripping assets and claiming it as your own is outright theft.

Law-wise, gameplay mechanics are technically not copyrightable, but the assets and execution are. So, open world, building things with blocks and crafting is not protected under copyright, anyone can take that idea and make something from it. A lot of the 'clones' that Liberty listed look like they just outright steal the assets (though how much you could actually fight over 'pixelly block that looks like dirt' is iffy...)

Key point is though, people outright stole things from minecraft after it was already a massive success, and the clones I'm sure barely scratch any profit/credit from it. I sincerely doubt thieves are trolling RMN for vague concept ideas to steal.

I've stated it before, and its not entirely contrary to Louis' advice.

Pick your end point, and your starting point. What will your final boss be, about how much damage/healing do you expect characters to do at that point. How about your first enemy, how strong will it be? Balance your characters to be built around that, yet a bit stronger. Include all facets of your game, gear, one-time use stat boosts, optional things, etc, but where your best possible party will be...balance enemies to be below that. Never assume players will be perfect, or find every item or have all the best of everything. Reward them by making things a bit easier for doing everything right, but don't force them to get everything perfect.

Then walk back through your game, and decide certain choke points, parts of the game where you want your characters tested. Do the same for the final boss you did for these. Give the players gear and abilities to surpass the boss, but not overly much, and at the same time if they miss something, don't make the boss impossible. Not every boss should be a chokepoint, and not every chokepoint should be a boss. They should be important to the story though, to keep the flow and add to the importance of the challenge.

When you're finished, you should have a nice graph of where your characters should be at each point in the game, how strong they are at each point if they do everything perfect, and an average player missing a few things. This should allow you to keep everyone challenged throughout, without forcing them to follow a guide.

Its more of a general strategy, after all I don't know what sort of game you're designing, and the features you include. Make sure you include all your features in the balancing, and try to avoid adding extras afterwards, otherwise that throws off your balance.

Oh I know, practically all art is inspired by prior art. Outright stealing is when you see 'Sweet Squish' on the Apple store and it looks suspiciously like another candy flavored matching game...

Still, on the original topic, a lot of posters seem to be worried that their idea for an RPG will get outright stolen, which seems to me to show a lack of confidence in their abilities otherwise. If all you have going for you is your idea, as opposed to your ability to balance combat well, write a good story, execute said story, and actually finish something...well, you didn't have much to steal in the first place.

So something I've noticed a lot in these forums, and always made me curious: Why do people want to keep their ideas a secret when they post about them, especially when wanting to recruit others?

Admittedly, it always seems to be a new poster comes on, posts about an idea they want to do, but not give details, and then asking for scripting help or sprites.

It boggles my mind, I guess because a rather large thing that got drilled into me was 'fail early, fail often' in the few design courses I've taken. The basic theory is if its testable, test it as early as possible, so you can find out the flaws before it grows so large that they become unfixable. Simple things like making sure your jumping mechanics are right, or that your combat system feels right. It also works for ideas though, get your ideas out in front of as many people as possible, so people can point out flaws in them. Story, systems, all of those should be vetted as much as possible, and as early as possible.

I guess often people think that their one big idea is so amazing they don't want others to steal it, but don't realize that everyone else is working on their own ideas. In addition, most of the time people think their idea is new...when its not "Card game based RPG!" *points to the SNES DBZ game*. Games are more about execution than unique ideas. Pretty much every game nowadays, no matter how unique, can have their ideas traced back to something else.

Maybe I'm missing something?

Personally, I hand craft each character and every level for the game I'm working on right now. Then again, I also have a very small range of stats (min 1, max 6 for most cases), and only have 5 levels to work with. I may make the numbers larger to give me more wiggle room, but if I do that I'll just add a multiplier to each, and then hand adjust.

My damage formula is more complicated than the stats, most attack spells/skills/etc use a.atk - (b.randomizer(b.def * 2)) where randomizer calls a random number between 0-2, and if its 2, it reduces damage by 1. Makes defense wildly random, but still reliable (on average, they'll reduce damage by 66% of their defense, worst case reducing it by 0, best case reducing it by double their defense). Straight up a.atk-b.def for me doesn't work because I don't want situations where the characters have no chance of doing damage.

But basically: You should playtest, tons, tons and tons, make sure things feel right. I've already had to adjust the numbers a few times because things were rocket-taggy (IE, characters were either taking no damage, or being one shot, and either one shotting an enemy, or feeling too weak)