SEERIC'S PROFILE

While I do think that it's a valid point that most people don't just defend+heal their way through games, it's also quite valid that if a game designer provides a player with the ability to play a certain way, that way should not be 'boring' for the player. I think the initial path we took of finding ways to 'discourage' defensive play may not have necessarily been the right one (why include the possibility at all if you're just going to actively discourage it after all) and instead it may be better to think up ways of making defense more fun and less likely to bog down the 'flow' of a fight.

Of course, factors such as if the game itself is turn-based or ATB-based (or something else entirely) and what the party size is (the chance of an enemy attacking a party member who is using Defend is much higher in a party of two than in a party of five for instance) and other such matters can all make quite a big differences in the effectiveness of certain methods.

Here is an example I thought up of how to make defense more engaging and less likely to slow down the flow of combat. First, only give one character the Defend skill and make enemies direct their attacks to this character when it is used; giving it to multiple party members just raises the chance of 'wasted turns' defending against enemies which decided to attack a different party member. Second, this is a 'complete defense' skill which not only mitigates all damage, but reflects it back at the attacker(s). Third, the skill comes at a high risk; using Defend to block a large amount of damage over the course of a fight (or perhaps a certain number of hits) will 'break' the character's shield until the fight ends, which will not only remove the Defend skill, but which will also significantly reduce the character's maximum HP (at least 50%) until the fight is over. This way, Defend is actually a great offensive tool which doesn't break the flow of combat while coming at a high price if it is overused.

I think the concept of 'storyline vs gameplay' may be something of a false dichotomy as there is no reason to keep the two separated into 'story segments' and 'gameplay segments'. In fact, games generally turn out much better when the two are combined to compliment each other.

A thing to keep in mind that even big-name developers seem to often forget is video games as an artform are not the same as movies, plays, or books (not that any of these things are the same as each other either of course) in that the sense of 'touch' and the interactions a player makes through it is the primary strength of video games while 'hearing' and 'sight' are secondary. While a few cutscenes are fine, loading a game to the brim with them or making excessively lengthy ones (ex: Xenosaga) is not a good way to handle storytelling in video games regardless of the quality of the writing as it takes control away from the player.

Instead, there are various ways to tell the story and develop characters through gameplay, especially in RPG's. These include:

1) Make flavor text both plentiful and meaningful. Comments which characters make either to themselves or to each other when observing things around the environment (pots, bookshelves, dressers, oddly-shaped rocks, statues, etc) can go a long way towards passively shaping a character's personality and telling players about the general state of relationships between party members. Many high-quality games do this, such as Earthbound, most entries in the Dragon Quest series, and even various RPG Maker games such as Star Stealing Prince.

2) Make puzzles meaningful whenever possible. Even a simple block-pushing puzzle can work to flesh out the history behind a place or a world. For example, let's say there is an ancient temple from a civilization which originally worshiped four gods, but which eventually praised one over the other three. In such a place, you could have statues representing each of the gods (examining each statue informs the player of the name of each god) along with pushable torches representing the worshipers and a tablet somewhere with a short hint such as "We foolishly worshiped the Four equally before seeing the supremacy of Vilna"; the solution would be to move the torches to surround the statue representing 'Vilna', which in turn will cause a door to open and the statues of the other three gods to fall apart to represent their 'death'. La Mulana is a fantastic example of how to tell a story via puzzles and clues as many puzzles rely heavily upon understanding the basic backstory and history of the ruins in order to solve them.

3) Use the environment itself to tell the story. You don't need to spell everything out for players in cutscenes, they can piece things together themselves with a sentence or two from a random NPC in town and objects they see in their environment. Dark Souls is an especially good example of this with the area 'New Londo Ruins' being particularly memorable; early in the ruins an NPC can be found who offhandedly mentions how they citizens of New Londo were used as sacrifices, but it isn't until the player goes deeper into the ruins that he/she sees the piles of corpses with an especially large pile in front of the barred-off city gate. In instances such as this, the player doesn't need to have an NPC go into a lengthy discussion of the history of a place nor do the characters need to go into a long discussion about how 'horrible' everything is, the player can see the 'story' behind a place simply by looking around without breaking gameplay

4) Combat itself can be used to tell a story, both via character skills and enemies. Most games do this on at least a basic level, such as by putting zombies in a necromancer's castle or alligators and slimes in a sewer area. Bosses especially can be used for this; if a boss gains his power through a relic, allow players to attack or otherwise seal the relic in-combat to reduce the boss's strength, if a boss has a split personality, have him/her use two 'opposing' types of abilities (ex: light/dark spells) or outright switch between two different forms, etc. However, even the characters in the party themselves can be used to passively tell the story. Final Fantasy IV does this constantly to great effect; Rydia can use impressive magic, but she is incapable of casting Fire until she overcomes her fear, Edward is a coward so he automatically hides in combat when low on health, Cecil desires to become a protector so (unless a player is particularly persistent) he defeats his clone by not attacking at all and instead guarding and healing, etc.

While it is still entirely possible to make a good game which places a heavy emphasis either on story or upon combat, I'd argue that the best course to take when making your game is not to ask "Which should I focus on more?", but rather to ask "How can I use gameplay to tell a story with these places and characters?".

Well, my map is nearly complete. I just need to do some final bug testing, take some screenshots, and find an additional song or two so I should be able to submit it tomorrow.

I mainly stuck with RTP and focused on environmental changes; I see absolutely no reason why anyone should vote for my map since it's not going to be the prettiest one out there, but I managed to fit a full game into this single map so I hope at least one person ends up enjoying it.

I just finished my review for Lufia V: For the Savior, so with any luck it will get approved soon and I can submit it here as well.

It seems like all that remains is Eyes of the Forest and Set Discrepancy, so hopefully someone will review them by the end of the week and we can move on to the 'bonus list' of games. I'm starting to feel burnt out on reviewing game demos, so I'm going to pass on taking either of these myself.