SAILERIUS'S PROFILE

author=Feldschlacht IV
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author=Nova
So, essentially, turn based combat allows for more planning and elaborate execution of different tasks than real time combat does, and so more effort should be put towards being able to do a more variety of actions, rather than rely on supermoves to blow away opponents.

I agree on this, turn based should be more of a culmination of player planning rather than being able to swiftly end things one way or the other!

This is kind of a mischaracterization of real-time combat. Yes, it's possible that real-time combat suffers from those problems, but only when it's poorly-implemented. Turn-based games often succumb to problems of their own when they're poorly-implemented. It's not really productive to talk about design paradigms in the context of assuming they're not done well.

For instance, the article gives the example of MOBAs for why real-time games require physical dexterity instead of tactical thinking, but that's a failure of those specific games to focus on a pace of gameplay in which action doesn't unfold faster than you can think and react (for that reason, I'm a strong advocate of real-time games always having a battle speed setting that players can adjust).

I don't really think there are more tactical options afforded to you in turn-based combat so much as there are different ones. The games I've played with the deepest gameplay have all been realtime. Rather than asserting that one is better than the other, it's probably a more productive (and interesting) conversation to compare and contrast what you can do in one versus the other and what design affordances to consider when choosing between turn-based vs continuous gameplay.

The notion of randomness is a good one, because it's intended to be a turn-based simulation of the chaos that's inherent in real-time gameplay. You shouldn't need randomness in a real-time game because that degree of success can be modeled in a physically intuitive sense through the fact that your attacks need to connect with the enemy's sprite/model.

Cancer sucks, man. :(

One thing I find strange is the smoothness of the gradients in the meters as compared to the very pixellated look of the sprites and font. I think it would look more consistent if the meters had a flat color.

There are so many games now. There are so many free games that you could play them for the rest of your life without ever spending a dime on a game that costs money. Steam sales have devalued games to near-worthlessness as so many people own more games than they will ever play.

As a result, hooking the player right off the bat is more important than ever before. If it takes too much effort to learn how to play your game, I have two thousand other games in my library that I could play instead. I don't care how good you promise me your game is, I own so many games and have so little time that if it's not engaging from second one, I'm already thinking about the other games I could play that might be more fun.

Oldschool games often rely on frustrating you into learning how to play by not allowing you to progress until you figure certain things out but without ever outright telling you how to do them. That might have flown back then, but annoying the player nowadays is a recipe for getting your game uninstalled.

author=djbeardo
One common complaint I see on here is that people generally don't like games that start with draggy cutscenes or weirdly long tutorials. Of course, if your game is more of a visual novel, it's going to be all cutscene... so that advice may not help. But I would give the player an opportunity to do something quickly after the game starts.
Also, if your intro does start with a cutscene (even an exciting one), be sure things are spelled correctly and the attention to detail is generally high. If there are hitches, typos, dead events, wrong busts, etc., people will tune out.

That's generally true but if the intro is really gripping and engaging, you can get away with anything. The opening sequence to MGSV is astounding, even though it's what, 15, 20 minutes long? but it keeps you so engaged that the time flies by, and it builds your anticipation for when the gameplay starts.

I do agree in theory though. I recently started playing Trails in the Sky and it was an hour and a half before I got to the first battle, and if you asked me to summarize what happened in the intro, I couldn't really tell you anything. It was just a whole lot of nothing.