RYAREISENDER'S PROFILE

I'm quite a bit into this genre and actually wished more people would make such games. My favorite game of the genre is Shining in the Darkness, it basically is THE perfect dungeon crawler for me. But I also like the Wizardry 1-3 remakes released for SNES and Arcana is also quite nice. Oh and Legend of Grimrock was enjoyable too. And I guess Sword of Vermillion and Phantasy Star I though they are hybrids (normal RPG combined with dungeon crawler).

Anyway, what I like in dungeon crawlers:
- they should be GRID BASED, no discussion
- there should be a way to view a top-down map of your surrounding somehow (doesn't need to be unlimited)
- there should be a way to instantly escape the dungeon and get back to town
- there should be town hub where you can sell and buy equipments and items and maybe has some story going on (like meeting other adventurers who were in the dungeon and heard something strange, stuff like that that helps with possible puzzles)
- possibility to save anywhere (especially when the game is hard or has instant-death traps)
- unique locations and interesting spots to note... these can be small things like water puddles so you are like "oh yeah this is the long floor with the puddle and not that other long floor", but should also contain puzzle rooms or rooms that look unique; and also regions or tiles that have certain effect (visible pits, hidden pits, damaging floor, floor sucking out your magic, floor that makes casting impossible, just something that keeps the game interesting later into the game)
- surprises! like unexpected encounters that are not just random encounters (like a boss crawling out behind the wall or you meet another adventurer, etc.)
- spells, any good dungeon crawler needs interesting spells
- turn based battle system, I don't really like real time battles in my dungeon crawlers
- challenging difficulty, no dungeon crawler is good if there is no sense of running out of resources or risk of death (to keep it casual anyway there is the save-anywhere and the exit-spell features)
- non-linear multi-layered dungeon structure, it should include pits where you fall down and have to find your way back up for example, not just "clear floor 1" and "clear floor 2" and then "clear floor 3", that's boring, it's more interesting if you go to down a few floors, then back up to get to another region of that first floor and so on; with unlinear I mean multiple places to go and possibly multiple possible paths, not just one linear correct path and the rest is just dead-ends
- treasure chests!
- shortcuts! that means if you reach a certain part of the dungeon you find some way to unlock a shortcut so the next time you venture into the dungeon you can get there faster, this could be thanks to finding a key, but also more interesting things like an orb that lets you fight against a certain wall (SitD) or even an elevator (Wizardry), it's no fun having to walk the same path again and again everytime you escaped back to the town

What I don't like:
- if the dungeon crawler is missing anything on the "like" list, yeah those things are pretty much mandatory for me to enjoy the game
- please no "DRAW YOUR OWN MAP" thing, the system should draw it automatically (of course only showing tiles I've already been on)
- no "create your own heroes" stuff, I prefer a fixed party and a story-driven game, also having to roll your characters at the beginning of a game is always so overwhelming, I really don't like bothering with builds and stuff, this ruins most games for me (though I'm fine if it's an optional feature), I liked in Shining in the Darkness, Arcana and Wizardry that the character growth is basically not in your power
- single hero, I don't really like dungeon crawlers where you only play a single hero, it usually makes combat boring, I rather have a party of 3-6 people
- not being able to see if there is a wall left/right of you or not; you should be able to see the "edge" of the wall to determine that there is a free tile or a wall left/right of you, Wizardry and Shining in the Darkness did that right but in several other games it really bothered me that you had to turn around to see if there is a wall there or not
- invisible objects until you are standing on the exactly same tile; this is something bothering me in many dungeon crawlers, often you just see walls and floor unless you walk on an event tile and then suddenly it does "bling, you found a treasure chest" or "bling, you found a switch", this is super annoying, I want to be able to see the options even when I'm not standing on the exact tile there are on, like if there is a treasure chest 2 tiles in front of me I want to see it; it also should look realistic and not just a flying treasure chest or switch mid-air
- light system, I'm not very fond of it as in if you don't use your torch item or the light spell you won't see much, it forces you to walk through the dungeons in the dark most of the time because you don't want to waste MP or keep backtracking to restock on torches all the time, in the end it feels like "let's display the graphics in worse than they actually are because we like to punish players for conserving their resources" (I'm fine with "you can't see anything here" areas, though, if they aren't too big)
- too high encounter rate, I do like my random encounters (though I'm open for other approaches, but please no "limited monsters only" because that makes backtracking too boring and you can't even grind if that next boss is too hard for you), but in dungeon crawlers there is a lot of walking into dead ends an stuff and the developers often don't realize that they walk the dungeons much more effectively than other people and set the encounter rate to something they thing as acceptable, but often it ends up being too high... an encounter every 3-5 steps is just too much, it's fine if sometimes there are two encounters in row, but there should also be times where you can explore quite a bit without one like for example every 3-30 steps (if turning around doesn't count as step then maybe 3-15); oh and don't reset the encounter "counter" on floor changes, I always find it silly that I won't get encounters in section that have lots of stairs and pits

Optional:
- rare drops, in Wizardry it's nice getting something rare, but in for example Legend of Grimrock where all items are 100% fixed that was fine for me too
- indoor / outdoor combinations; this is a very nice-to-have but not mandatory, for example if you are in a tower-like dungeon and you get outdoor and walk around the tower there, or if the dungeon is combined with a mountain, maybe you travel a small part on that mountain, it's quite overwhelming after walking inside a dark dungeon for a while to see the sky, I love that
- fear of being lost, for example entering a region where your map suddenly doesn't work anymore, often this feel very "bad" at first, but when you actually figure out where to go, it is a great feeling

Okay that's all that comes to mind for now.

The thread title implies that game length is usually a good thing, but I would disagree. The shorter and simpler the game, the better it can get.

Of course this is not considering money, because if I pay $50 for a game and then it's only 60 seconds long, I'd feel ripped off no matter how deep its message is.

Generally for RPGs I think my absolute limit is 30 hours. If the game is longer than 30 hours the chance that I'll never finish it is over 90%, no matter how good it is, because it simply gets boring. And with most RPG Maker games I can't even stand playing them for more than 4-5 hours because they are often not something completely new. Of course there are totally unique RPG Maker games where this doesn't apply, but I can't imagine any way to make a game interesting for more than 30 hours ever.

So yeah basically a "weather" system with randomly changing weather in random intervals on which the player needs to react.

Or call it "field effect" system, it's basically like in Alter AILA Genesis, except out of player control.

Of course you can imagine a lot of things from, making certain attacks do more/less damage over 10 times damage from poison effects to certain buffs will do something different.

I want to clarify one thing: Do you really want to make the game about resource management as in "if you go into too many battles your resources won't be enough" or do you rather want people to avoid battle because each battle could end deadly? Or really a combination of both?

I also think ATB or the way that skills work is not really too relevant for the problem at hand.
Resource managment vs. challenge in every battle is a more common problem completely unrelated to the battle system.


I still have some thoughts for you:
1. You can make healing items that can only be used outside battle.
2. You might want to consider to not allow healing in combat at all or make healing so weak that monsters will outdamage it (hint: it still has a strategical value if you have more than one party member).

I don't think defining unique skills and conditions really is the solution to make unique and interesting battles. The whole battle system needs to be designed around the skills in the first place.

A simple system is always better because it's easier for players to understand. If you have 30 skills and all skills behave unique with no common damage type or anything, it will just force the player to try every single one on each monster to figure out what's best, I don't really think that leads to the goal.

So rather than making unique skills better make a unique battle system and then design skills around that battle system.

For example if you think about combining different base effects to get a stronger effect, this is a good idea for example for a card drawing system like in Baten Kaitos. Whereas in a simple turn based game it will just make battles take way to long (how often do you even use 3 skills in a single normal battle?).