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I believe RPG Maker and similar programs are capable of producing fantastic, unique, and enduring experiences and I love hunting down hidden gems. That being said, I admit to a near-equal love of wonky or horribly broken games and enjoy reviewing games on both ends of the spectrum.
In my opinion, the worst thing a game can be is perfectly average as such a game lacks both passion and a sense of identity.
In my opinion, the worst thing a game can be is perfectly average as such a game lacks both passion and a sense of identity.
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[Poll] Status effect against bosses
author=Darkflamewolf
I have death spells in my game and I'm trying to balance them by making them effectively 85% of the time, but that's only against enemies who are vulnerable to such spells. I even have a full party death summon, but he's 50% effective when you first get him and you have to level him up to a respectable 90% success rate. But all bosses are immune to that, of course, and later in the game, you'll encounter enemies who simply shrug off instant death, so if you've been leaning on it as a crutch for most of the game...well sorry to switch up your tactics, but you've gotta change!
See, I think that with a bit of tweaking this could actually become a perfectly viable spell for summons and a better spell for normal encounters. Making a spell which has a 50% chance to kill off enemies and later a 90% chance is a kinda iffy decision for two big reasons. First, since the spell 'levels up', this means players will have to invest time and/or money (or something else) into upgrading this thing, but this investment will be wasted later on if even normal enemies can 'shrug off instant death'; it's giving players a tool to work with which will just sit there taking up space in the spell list later on. Secondly, even 50%, let alone 90%, is a really high chance of instant death; if it misses it turns into a wasted turn, but if it hits it can really trivialize encounters - normal enemies should never be trivialized as they are what the player will be facing far more often than bosses.
However, as I said, I believe a spell like this can still be viable both later on and during boss fights. For a start, you should reduce the base instant-kill chance to somewhere in the 5-10% range and only allow this to increase to about 15-20% at the absolute most so that it's a 'nice bonus' rather than an expected occurrence. Secondly, make the spell deal dark-elemental (or neutral if dark is not in your game) damage when it doesn't instant-kill and have this damage increase as the summon levels up. With these steps, you have gone from a spell which is non-viable in late-game and boss encounters and which is a matter of risk/reward to a spell which is always rewarding and sometimes grants a 'big reward' (instant death) and which remains desirable and viable both in late game and in boss fights as 'a spell for doing dark/neutral/whatever elemental damage'.
Tower of Immortals
This seems like a neat enough dungeon crawler and it's a noticeable improvement over Island of Farnor, but after about an hour of play I have found some concerns:
1) Once you gain access to the teleporter in town by defeating the boss on floor 10 nothing stops you from teleporting to floor 20, 30, and 50. I haven't reached floor 60 yet to activate the second teleporter, but I imagine it's the same way.
2) The hospital in town seems redundant and pointless as there is water on the first floor of the tower which fully restores HP and MP. Unless some sort of twist happens later on, I don't see any reason why I would bother to pay money to use the hospital. Perhaps make water in the tower only restore HP or do something else to make the hospital more appealing?
3) Ribbons grant protection from all status ailments, are the best helmets you can buy, and cost 250 gold. While I suspect that there are better helmets to find defense-wise in the tower, negating status ailments is a pretty big thing and I had enough money to buy ribbons for my entire party by floor 15. Unless you have some early battle which more or less demands a full ribbon-wearing party in order to survive it, you should really consider either removing the status ailment protection from the ribbons or (preferably) making them obtainable only late in the game.
4) The encounter rate seems to be tuned a bit high, but there is an extremely high chance to successfully escape from fights. While you of course need experience to defeat the bosses, there isn't much tension because I can save anywhere and almost always succeed in running away and can just grind near some healing water. I'd suggest slightly reducing the encounter rate and compensating by significantly reducing the chance to run to kill two birds with one stone.
5) You may want to consider putting the tower on a separate map from the town or at least farther away from it as the perspective currently makes the 100(?) floor tower look like it's the size of a single-room house.
1) Once you gain access to the teleporter in town by defeating the boss on floor 10 nothing stops you from teleporting to floor 20, 30, and 50. I haven't reached floor 60 yet to activate the second teleporter, but I imagine it's the same way.
2) The hospital in town seems redundant and pointless as there is water on the first floor of the tower which fully restores HP and MP. Unless some sort of twist happens later on, I don't see any reason why I would bother to pay money to use the hospital. Perhaps make water in the tower only restore HP or do something else to make the hospital more appealing?
3) Ribbons grant protection from all status ailments, are the best helmets you can buy, and cost 250 gold. While I suspect that there are better helmets to find defense-wise in the tower, negating status ailments is a pretty big thing and I had enough money to buy ribbons for my entire party by floor 15. Unless you have some early battle which more or less demands a full ribbon-wearing party in order to survive it, you should really consider either removing the status ailment protection from the ribbons or (preferably) making them obtainable only late in the game.
4) The encounter rate seems to be tuned a bit high, but there is an extremely high chance to successfully escape from fights. While you of course need experience to defeat the bosses, there isn't much tension because I can save anywhere and almost always succeed in running away and can just grind near some healing water. I'd suggest slightly reducing the encounter rate and compensating by significantly reducing the chance to run to kill two birds with one stone.
5) You may want to consider putting the tower on a separate map from the town or at least farther away from it as the perspective currently makes the 100(?) floor tower look like it's the size of a single-room house.
[Poll] Status effect against bosses
Really, a lot depends upon which status effects are in the game and how they are implemented in the first place. It's entirely fine to have a game where bosses are immune to status effects if you take into account that status effects will not be useful during boss fights during the design phase (ex: perhaps normal enemies are still challenging enough that status effects aren't completely overlooked). However, I do think there are two 'never do this' things which I'll list here:
1) Immunity in a game with a character/class based around status effects - This doesn't come up overly often, but it's always annoying when it does. When a game has a character or a class which revolves largely around tossing out status effects, it is horrible design to make this character/class almost entirely useless during boss fights. This isn't to say that a boss can't be immune to certain effects, but you should never make a player feel like leveling up a character is pointless.
2) Turn skipping effects work on bosses - This is one which pops up in a lot of RPG's by new developers. Any effect which can cause an enemy to completely skip a turn, whether it be a stun or a side effect of an ice spell or something else, should never be usable on bosses. Unless the game has some sort of odd system in place (ex: bosses become immune to stun after being affected by it once), this deprives boss fights of any challenge as they inevitably are reduced to having characters spam whichever skills have a chance to freeze/stunlock the boss. This also applies to any status ailment which also can potentially lock a boss out of doing anything, such as confuse and petrify. Also, PsychoFreaX posed a high mana cost as a solution to this, but I would have to really just disagree; even if you severely limit mana recovery and make stun-like abilities cost an extremely large amount of MP, a battle which consists in part of the party taking a few turns to simply whale on a completely incapacitated boss is simply not fun and deprives the fight of tension, resulting in poor design - stun is a nice little bonus for normal encounters (though I dislike any skill which is purely a stun/sleep/confuse/freeze) as it helps the party conserve a bit more HP/MP for the big fights, but it should never be considered even a potentially viable aid during boss fights.
With that being said, I think status effects can be great for boss fights if implemented properly as they give the party something to do other than raw damage and healing. Giving the boss buffs which can be countered further adds a sense of strategy and some of my favorite fights in RPG's are ones where the player needs to rapidly make use of status effects simply to counter the boss's own buffs (ex: slow to counter haste, attack down to counter attack up, dispel to counter regen, etc).
Lastly, you could always get creative with status effects to make them more about risk vs. reward. Namely, let them have both a downside and an upside. For example, a status effect which cuts an opponent's damage in half for one turn and then doubles it the next turn would be very useful if you desperately need a heal or if a boss is charging up a big attack and you could also have skills which reduce physical attack while increasing magic attack and vice versa and so on.
1) Immunity in a game with a character/class based around status effects - This doesn't come up overly often, but it's always annoying when it does. When a game has a character or a class which revolves largely around tossing out status effects, it is horrible design to make this character/class almost entirely useless during boss fights. This isn't to say that a boss can't be immune to certain effects, but you should never make a player feel like leveling up a character is pointless.
2) Turn skipping effects work on bosses - This is one which pops up in a lot of RPG's by new developers. Any effect which can cause an enemy to completely skip a turn, whether it be a stun or a side effect of an ice spell or something else, should never be usable on bosses. Unless the game has some sort of odd system in place (ex: bosses become immune to stun after being affected by it once), this deprives boss fights of any challenge as they inevitably are reduced to having characters spam whichever skills have a chance to freeze/stunlock the boss. This also applies to any status ailment which also can potentially lock a boss out of doing anything, such as confuse and petrify. Also, PsychoFreaX posed a high mana cost as a solution to this, but I would have to really just disagree; even if you severely limit mana recovery and make stun-like abilities cost an extremely large amount of MP, a battle which consists in part of the party taking a few turns to simply whale on a completely incapacitated boss is simply not fun and deprives the fight of tension, resulting in poor design - stun is a nice little bonus for normal encounters (though I dislike any skill which is purely a stun/sleep/confuse/freeze) as it helps the party conserve a bit more HP/MP for the big fights, but it should never be considered even a potentially viable aid during boss fights.
With that being said, I think status effects can be great for boss fights if implemented properly as they give the party something to do other than raw damage and healing. Giving the boss buffs which can be countered further adds a sense of strategy and some of my favorite fights in RPG's are ones where the player needs to rapidly make use of status effects simply to counter the boss's own buffs (ex: slow to counter haste, attack down to counter attack up, dispel to counter regen, etc).
Lastly, you could always get creative with status effects to make them more about risk vs. reward. Namely, let them have both a downside and an upside. For example, a status effect which cuts an opponent's damage in half for one turn and then doubles it the next turn would be very useful if you desperately need a heal or if a boss is charging up a big attack and you could also have skills which reduce physical attack while increasing magic attack and vice versa and so on.
Commercial gams - a philosophical & practicality debate
author=MISTER BIG T
Uh, if they're unfamiliar with it how can they tell it's RPG Maker game?
Just to clarify, I meant people who have at least heard about RPG Maker, but who may have never used it nor actually played a game made in it. RPG Maker games, especially those using the RTP assets, are usually pretty easy to identify even from a single screenshot. There are also plenty who will instantly dislike a game they have not even seen a screenshot of if they so much as hear that it was made using RPG Maker. For example, while none of the RPG Maker games uploaded to Greenlight when it first launched were necessarily masterpieces, the comments section for any given game was filled to the brim with comments along the lines of "RPG Maker no" instead of anything resembling feedback about the game itself.
Basically, I meant that in this particular way RPG Maker games are quite a bit like anime; in both cases there is enough of a sense of general negativity surrounding the medium that many people who do not bother watching/playing products created in the medium have a knee jerk negative reaction to anything at all associated with the medium instead of judging a work on its own merits.
EDIT: FlyingJester above me probably clarified it perfectly.
[Poll] Which is more important: Story, Graphics, or Sound?
Well, assuming we're talking about an RPG of some sort, I'd have to vote story.
However, I also feel like this is something of a trick question as I believe it is most important to have the three work together to create atmosphere, mood, and environmental storytelling. A story which is simply told by a narrator/character/journal is never as compelling in my opinion as one which can be pieced together through environmental clues with minimal dialogue. In this regard, you could even say that graphics (not necessarily graphical quality, but how graphics are used and where and why) trump story as the best stories are told through the visible environment; 'bad' or 'generic' graphics can still be very compelling if utilized properly.
In a similar fashion, sound (both music and sound effects) can greatly enhance the mood and atmosphere or just as easily ruin them, but since it serves to amplify something which already exists rather than to create something, which means it falls into a vital support role, I'd say it doesn't quite reach the levels of importance of the other two.
However, I also feel like this is something of a trick question as I believe it is most important to have the three work together to create atmosphere, mood, and environmental storytelling. A story which is simply told by a narrator/character/journal is never as compelling in my opinion as one which can be pieced together through environmental clues with minimal dialogue. In this regard, you could even say that graphics (not necessarily graphical quality, but how graphics are used and where and why) trump story as the best stories are told through the visible environment; 'bad' or 'generic' graphics can still be very compelling if utilized properly.
In a similar fashion, sound (both music and sound effects) can greatly enhance the mood and atmosphere or just as easily ruin them, but since it serves to amplify something which already exists rather than to create something, which means it falls into a vital support role, I'd say it doesn't quite reach the levels of importance of the other two.
Commercial gams - a philosophical & practicality debate
author=KingArthur
There are also an astoundingly larger number of "No" votes compared to "Yes" votes as of this writing if we were to simply tally up the vote count from those that have clearly stated as such.
Actually, the two sides seem to be pretty evenly split, at least within the bounds of this thread. However, I agree that there is a lot of middle of the road talk with most votes seeming to be 'yes, but only if so-and-so cautions are taken' and 'no, unless so-and-so thing is done'.
This seems to be rapidly getting complicated, so I'll try to make a list of points brought up so far; if I have misinterpreted a point or forgotten a major point, just message me and I will correct it (I will also try to edit this post to include points which may be brought up or changed as the discussion goes on:
- Some posters on both sides seem to think 'it would be ok if they were kept on a separate section/website,' but there has been opposition to this from both sides as well.
- Many of the 'no' votes still seem to be ok with allowing free demos and/or other free content on the site.
- Both sides agree that any purchasable games should not actually be available to buy directly through RMN.
- Both sides name quality control and potential scammers or those who would otherwise take advantage of the RMN community as concerns.
- The primary concern of the 'no' side is a change in the community on RMN from a 'hobbyist' community primarily consisting of developers to a more standard 'gaming' community primarily consisting of players.
- The primary concern of the 'yes' side is overall growth in the awareness of and/or developer population of RPG Maker and other niche game design engines found on this site.
- The possibility of putting a simple yes/no poll on the front page explicitly for the sake of gathering data has been brought up.
My vote remains yes, but as I have already posted several walls of text in this thread, I'll refrain from direct participation in this discussion from this point on and instead focus on trying to update this list from as neutral of a position as possible.
Commercial gams - a philosophical & practicality debate
author=kentona
I mean, these subpar games already exist. People can find them. Were they also to have a presence on RMN I don't think will all of the sudden destroy the image of RPG Maker any further.
They wouldn't really destroy the image of RPG Maker any further larger because RPG Maker already has an undeservedly terrible image outside of the community. I'm not saying a purchasable game being on RMN would suddenly give it a much better image, but there aren't really any sites out there which give much attention to purchasable RPG Maker games on a large scale either; purchasable RPG Maker games at the moment can generally only be found on the sites of their developers or on sites which have tens of thousands of games and accept pretty much anything.
If purchasable RPG Maker games were on RMN (or any site with a healthy population which focuses on indie games really), the games would get more exposure than they currently do and their developers would be able to get more profit. In addition, if a good chunk of the purchasable games on RMN turn out to be decent or even great, a solid library of purchasable games all in one place for an engine(s) does have much more of an impact than the same games spread across multiple websites, so good purchasable games would be easier to find both for the RPG Maker community and the gaming community as a whole and in turn it may help to encourage more developers to check out RPG maker and could open doors for existing developers on other sites.
Those were just best and worst case scenarios though. Likely, there would be a fairly even mix of good and bad purchasable games and some developers get more exposure from the existing RPG Maker community, but things otherwise largely remain unchanged.
Commercial gams - a philosophical & practicality debate
sbester, while I understand your concern that people may believe price = quality, I also believe that the RPG Maker community of all communities is the best one for circumventing this danger. Anyone familiar with RPG Maker games (or free indie games in general for that matter) is likely already aware that a free game can be just as compelling as a $15 or even a $50+ game and likewise that a game with a price tag can still be complete garbage.
You also mention "I know that a lot of people will argue that it's a player's own fault for not knowing the difference between a solid, well made commercial project and a cheap, thrown together one, but people who have never seen an RM game before is not going to realize the difference," but I think the exact opposite is the case. At the present time, the vast, vast majority of gamers who are unfamiliar with RM will take one look at a game made in the engine and, even if it uses an entirely custom battle system with unique graphical and music assets, will still say 'ew it's an RPG Maker game' and not touch it. Those who are familiar with RM are likely going to be able to tell the difference between a mediocre game and a good one from a mile away while those unfamiliar with RM generally won't even touch an excellent free game, let alone a below-average purchasable one. Not to mention, RMN has an in-built review system so if all else fails a poor purchasable game will almost certainly receive equally poor reviews.
If someone pours hundreds/thousands of hours into making a great game, I really don't see a problem with letting them ask money for a well-made product if they desire to do so. Likewise, developers who do not desire money for their products are unlikely to hop onto the 'commercial games' bandwagon as they would have likely already done so on sites other than RMN.
To wrap things up a little, I'll sort this into a best-case vs worst-case scenario:
Best: The site gets some good games, both new ones and existing which which previously were not allowed. Indie games made using RPG Maker and similar engines get some good publicity and the stigma against them lessens a bit, allowing people the potential to make a living (or at least a decent amount of money) doing something they're passionate about while developers who choose to maintain their products as freeware can be taken more seriously even on sites not focused on RPG Maker.
Worst: A bunch of cheap cash-in commercial games appear. The truly terrible ones get filtered out before they are even allowed on the site while the subpar ones receive terrible reviews and fade into obscurity after making a handful of money. RPG Maker and similar engines get terrible press and the majority of the gaming community reaffirms their already highly-negative stance on such games while the RPG Maker community continues on as always and nothing really changes. As hosting commercial games proved to be something of a disaster not worth the effort, RMN goes back to barring commercial games and everything goes back to the way it was here as well.
Basically, I realize that there are risks involved if things go poorly and there will certainly be a handful of terrible cash-in games in even the best of scenarios so allowing purchasable games is a gamble no matter how RMN goes about it, but I think the potential benefits to RMN, to the RPG Maker community, and even to the indie community as a whole far outway the potential downsides, especially since those downsides can always be reversed by the removal of commercial games, so it seems like a risk worth taking to me.
You also mention "I know that a lot of people will argue that it's a player's own fault for not knowing the difference between a solid, well made commercial project and a cheap, thrown together one, but people who have never seen an RM game before is not going to realize the difference," but I think the exact opposite is the case. At the present time, the vast, vast majority of gamers who are unfamiliar with RM will take one look at a game made in the engine and, even if it uses an entirely custom battle system with unique graphical and music assets, will still say 'ew it's an RPG Maker game' and not touch it. Those who are familiar with RM are likely going to be able to tell the difference between a mediocre game and a good one from a mile away while those unfamiliar with RM generally won't even touch an excellent free game, let alone a below-average purchasable one. Not to mention, RMN has an in-built review system so if all else fails a poor purchasable game will almost certainly receive equally poor reviews.
If someone pours hundreds/thousands of hours into making a great game, I really don't see a problem with letting them ask money for a well-made product if they desire to do so. Likewise, developers who do not desire money for their products are unlikely to hop onto the 'commercial games' bandwagon as they would have likely already done so on sites other than RMN.
To wrap things up a little, I'll sort this into a best-case vs worst-case scenario:
Best: The site gets some good games, both new ones and existing which which previously were not allowed. Indie games made using RPG Maker and similar engines get some good publicity and the stigma against them lessens a bit, allowing people the potential to make a living (or at least a decent amount of money) doing something they're passionate about while developers who choose to maintain their products as freeware can be taken more seriously even on sites not focused on RPG Maker.
Worst: A bunch of cheap cash-in commercial games appear. The truly terrible ones get filtered out before they are even allowed on the site while the subpar ones receive terrible reviews and fade into obscurity after making a handful of money. RPG Maker and similar engines get terrible press and the majority of the gaming community reaffirms their already highly-negative stance on such games while the RPG Maker community continues on as always and nothing really changes. As hosting commercial games proved to be something of a disaster not worth the effort, RMN goes back to barring commercial games and everything goes back to the way it was here as well.
Basically, I realize that there are risks involved if things go poorly and there will certainly be a handful of terrible cash-in games in even the best of scenarios so allowing purchasable games is a gamble no matter how RMN goes about it, but I think the potential benefits to RMN, to the RPG Maker community, and even to the indie community as a whole far outway the potential downsides, especially since those downsides can always be reversed by the removal of commercial games, so it seems like a risk worth taking to me.
Commercial gams - a philosophical & practicality debate
author=harmonic
I disagree with minimum makerscore. Poor Soli (and whoever else has to deal with peoples' ways of getting makerscore) should not be expected to discern the validity of the inevitable attempts to deliberately pad makerscores to the bare minimum. It's just not prudent.
Overall, I think RMN just needs to learn to trust people, and their opinions. Trust that the people who deserve to share their project on here will put forth the time and effort to do it right - trust that if someone doesn't do it right, that they'll be at best ignored, or at worst, e-lynched.
You have a good point, though worrying about people padding out their makerscore is just as much of a trust issue as my worrying about the site getting flooded with zero-effort games I think.
Either way, if not by Makerscore, I do feel like if purchasable games were added there would have to be at least some sort of prerequisite; while RMN is very different in many ways from Steam and Greenlight, the launch of Greenlight showed off how quickly junk can pile up the moment a chance at money comes into play. I'm not saying it would need to be a monetary prerequisite like Greenlight's $100 entry fee, but there needs to be some sort of way of preventing people from simply throwing a poorly-made purchasable game up on the site and never interacting in any other way.
Another alternative prerequisite could simply be a time-based unlock. For example, a user cannot upload a purchasable game to RMN unless that account has been in existence for X months (probably somewhere in the 6-12 month range). This would have the downside of temporarily excluding legitimately talented developers from showing off their purchasable products if they recently joined, but they still would be able to upload free games just fine and wouldn't need to wait too long anyway. On the other side of things, the type of person who would be looking to cash in on a terrible game isn't likely to also be the type who would sit on an account for months just to upload it.
Without any prerequisite, I'm simply afraid there would be too many 'fly-by uploaders' who would really clutter up the site with junk, but even a small requirement in any form for uploading a purchasable game would likely prevent such a mess.
Commercial gams - a philosophical & practicality debate
I think it could be a good idea to allow commercial games as it would help both RMN and the game gain a bit of publicity and could help at least slightly remove the massive stigma against games made in RPG Maker (and other engines which don't necessarily rely upon 'real code'). However, I do think some restrictions should be in place, such as:
Minimum Makerscore:
This is a big one which I think should really be included. Simply put, if a person wants to add a purchasable game/games to RMN, they need to have first accumulated a minimum Makerscore, probably something like 500 or 1000, which is relatively low, but which still requires a degree of effort to achieve. This way, it shows that they have been in at least some way an active member of the community and don't plan to just use RMN as a form of 'free advertising' for their game and move on. Without this or a similar restriction, I have to imagine that quite a few people would simply cobble together terrible zero-effort games, slap a price tag on them, and then upload them here, which would both hurt the site and further damage the overall general viewpoint of RPG Maker games.
Separate Section:
I think games with a price tag should go in an entirely different section from the free games if they get added. Even with a filter option, it would likely be a mess as you'd probably have developers with a 'free demo' still showing up in the free section and the like. If a game has anything at all which costs money, whether that be the game itself, an expansion, or some form of add-on, it should go into a separate area.
Nothing Hosted Here:
If you're worried abut legal issues, simply play it safe. It's unlikely that a developer would ever take legal action against RMN because it somehow 'hurt their sales', but someone putting a price tag on a game which includes pop songs or ripped sprites is another issue altogether. So, if a person 'uploads' a game which costs money to RMN, any downloads at all related to their game (including free demos) should remain strictly off-site. Furthermore, there should be a way to report any game which costs money yet includes copyright-breaking stuff; these games would have to be completely taken down until the issue is resolved. In this regard, the system would work in a way very similar to how Steam's Greenlight system worked whenever someone posted an RPG Maker game which included stuff which was blatantly not theirs.
So, I'm voting yes to this, but I understand that there are a lot of things which would need to be taken into account. At best, existing members of the RMN community would have a way to make a bit of money off of their hard work as both their free and purchasable games would be visible to us and it could help draw the attention of the general gaming population towards some of the better freeware games too. At worst, it could lead to a lot of additional work if people frequently post purchasable games which break copyright, but the limitation of a minimum Makerscore and/or some other limitations would presumably reduce this.
Minimum Makerscore:
This is a big one which I think should really be included. Simply put, if a person wants to add a purchasable game/games to RMN, they need to have first accumulated a minimum Makerscore, probably something like 500 or 1000, which is relatively low, but which still requires a degree of effort to achieve. This way, it shows that they have been in at least some way an active member of the community and don't plan to just use RMN as a form of 'free advertising' for their game and move on. Without this or a similar restriction, I have to imagine that quite a few people would simply cobble together terrible zero-effort games, slap a price tag on them, and then upload them here, which would both hurt the site and further damage the overall general viewpoint of RPG Maker games.
Separate Section:
I think games with a price tag should go in an entirely different section from the free games if they get added. Even with a filter option, it would likely be a mess as you'd probably have developers with a 'free demo' still showing up in the free section and the like. If a game has anything at all which costs money, whether that be the game itself, an expansion, or some form of add-on, it should go into a separate area.
Nothing Hosted Here:
If you're worried abut legal issues, simply play it safe. It's unlikely that a developer would ever take legal action against RMN because it somehow 'hurt their sales', but someone putting a price tag on a game which includes pop songs or ripped sprites is another issue altogether. So, if a person 'uploads' a game which costs money to RMN, any downloads at all related to their game (including free demos) should remain strictly off-site. Furthermore, there should be a way to report any game which costs money yet includes copyright-breaking stuff; these games would have to be completely taken down until the issue is resolved. In this regard, the system would work in a way very similar to how Steam's Greenlight system worked whenever someone posted an RPG Maker game which included stuff which was blatantly not theirs.
So, I'm voting yes to this, but I understand that there are a lot of things which would need to be taken into account. At best, existing members of the RMN community would have a way to make a bit of money off of their hard work as both their free and purchasable games would be visible to us and it could help draw the attention of the general gaming population towards some of the better freeware games too. At worst, it could lead to a lot of additional work if people frequently post purchasable games which break copyright, but the limitation of a minimum Makerscore and/or some other limitations would presumably reduce this.
Games - Tester
Games - Other
