THE_MINUTEMAN'S PROFILE

author=SOleyu
Towns are basically tools, used to control the pacing of the game. The are made to serve as stops, clear notifiers that the player has finished a given portion of a game, as such they let the player rest, stock up, get new weapons, get new sidequests, but more importantly, advance the plot and the game. They let the player know that he/she is progressing in the game, and they let the designer, control character progressing (new weapons and new, more powerful enemies), direct the player to their next goal and expand the lore and culture of the world.

Because of that, you can't make towns be in a sense "interesting", players are trained, specially in RPGs, to search for everything that might be important, you make a town that big and with all that things, your player might feel overwhelmed, or worse bored and frustrated, so many things are there and so little are actually important (as related to game progression rather than lore)that the players stop exploring and that might make them lose stuff that are actually important to said progression, which again leads to frustration. And that is not even counting that players are also trained to look for places that are, in a word overproduced, places that look like they took time to make, players assume that there is something for them there. Your players might spend so long in the town that they might stop progressing or forget the story threads that you have laid out for them, which in the worst case scenario might make them lose interest in your game entirely.

The main problem, as I see it, is that of priorities, an RPG takes so much time and care to make that you must decide which parts are important to the game, while true that using your suggestions makes towns more interesting and more real, the fact of the matter is that it's preferable to spend that time into crafting the story and characters, balancing the game and making the systems better. Spending so much time in something that is, I'm afraid, incidental to the story that you are trying to tell, and the game you are trying to make, and specially if it might detract from those, is a bad idea. Changing the towns over time, adding systems to make the NPCs move and have routines, adding unique dialog to them (and dialog that changes over time too)and diverse NPCs, repeated villain's attacks (specially if it has little to do with the story), are a lot of work, and if your game has towns that are crafted a lot, but the rest of the game feels bad, then your players will stop playing the game, and all that work will mean nothing, since no one will see it.

Now I'm not saying that your ideas are bad, (except maybe the accent one, 9 times out of 10, it makes the characters stereotypical and gimmick, and you don't want that, at all), far from it, specially the shop inventory one, but as designers, we must always be aware of what exactly is our goal, and the best way to do it, and the best way to focus on it, that means carefully crafting the pace of the story and gameplay and keep our players directed and interested and also, knowing what is we must focus on, after all we don't have infinite time or resources to make our game.

Of course, all this is related to "regular" towns, if there are towns where the player spends a lot of time in, or is critical to the story then yes, do all that you can to make it interesting and alive.

author=LockeZ
If your game is about crafting a living, breathing open world that the player can lose themselves in, then the stuff you listed in your article is great advice - but for most games, that's simply not what the game is about. It makes perfect sense to add this stuff in a game like Skyrim or Ultima Online. But if you added most of this stuff to Disgaea, Lufia 2, Etrian Odyssey, Dragon Warrior 4 or Diablo 3, it wouldn't make sense and would clash badly with the rest of the gameplay. It would diminish the game, not add to it. You wouldn't want the player to be spending substantial time exploring a town and getting to know its people and its streets so that they feel realistic and come to life - the player is meant to be doing other things.

Also, yeah, I've never seen accents written phonetically without cringing and wanting to punch the writer. This goes for anything, be it book, game or comic.

First of all, thank you both for the input. The constructive criticism is much appreciated. And yes, in many ways I agree. The point that I am making (and admittedly I should have made more clearly) is that some of the games I have played seem to attempt to give the feeling of a "a living, breathing open world that the player can lose themselves in" and fail to do so. Many of the ideas that I placed in this article came directly from my own dissatifaction with the feel of the towns in those games. However, I agree with what you are saying about these ideas not working well in certain genres. In fact, one of my all-time favorite games on this site ("Aurora Wing") does not utilize towns at all.

As for accents, that was not even really my idea. Kentona used accents in "Hero's Realm" and I thought it was a really cool idea. Not to piss you off to much, LockeZ, but if I ever succeed in making a game as awesome as "Hero's Realm", I intend to use accents as well.

author=karins_soulkeeper
This is a really nice article. And I have to agree with Chivi-chivik.

Though it wouldn't hurt to add some graphics and white space right?
It was pretty tiring and demotivational to read a wall of text.
Not many people have the patience to read through it all in one go.
A visual break or two would remedy this.

Yeah, I thought about putting graphics in the article, but 1) Graphical design is not my strong suit and 2) I'm better at describing these kinds of things than I am at demonstrating them (those who can't do teach, right?).

Nevertheless, thank you for the kind words.

author=karins_soulkeeper
Ps. Archeia is a 'she', just so you know.

PS: My bad on that; sorry!

Hey, I made it to Terita and got the dynamite from the guy. However, when I went to the cave north of the town to blast it open, it doesn't work. Am I doing something wrong here?

EDIT: Okay, I'm an idiot. I actually found the correct place shortly after posting this question. Sorry...

Obviously, I haven't released a game yet, but when it comes to profanity I try to avoid it. However, there are certain situations where I would allow it in the game I'm building. For example, here is the dialog for a scene when a defeated demon soldier decides to self-destruct:

DEMON: You may have defeated me, but you won't survive this! HA-HA-HA!
ALEX: What?! Oh shit! Take cover!
(The demon explodes engulfing the corridor in fire. Alex and Katrina dash around the corner just in time)
KATRINA: I hate it when they do that...

(End scene)

In that situation, a little profanity makes perfect sense. Alex is trying not to get burned alive. In general, I would not use profanity for the sake of using it. When you use words to often, they begin to lose their meaning.