VERSALIA'S PROFILE

Your MUD is not an Amateur RPG, it is just Amateur.

Directly copying from other games into one giant puke pile is not a game.

Sorry, it sounds harsh, and I don't normally approve of giving criticism in that format, but it's so overwhelmingly not well-done I can't think of how else to explain it.

author=LockeZ
FF12 is the unplayable apex of this problem, where the starting town has over 200 people you can talk to, and most of the other towns are just as big. (And yet you can still only talk to about one in ten people in towns, holy crap.)
Meanwhile, FF Tactics is a beautiful thing

It prompts a ! over their head and displays their name if you can talk to them and constantly displays a (...) bubble even if you're not trying to, so you cannot POSSIBLY waste time trying to find out if you can talk to everybody or not. How is this an unplayable extreme

Furthermore, why should every NPC need to have a purpose at every possible moment? If my Lumberjack's quest isn't available yet, he can still stand there merrily chopping wood until it's available. It's even more jarring, IMO, if nobody is home and suddenly he is there when the quest is available. It strains the flow of the game and WSOD when NPCs magically appear only when they are necessary (you think, "oh hey a quest" instead of "oh hey someone I might want to talk to").

Oh, but I forgot, you don't WANT to talk to anybody who doesn't serve a strictly utilitarian goal ("the cave is to the east")

edit: and can I just point out that not a single city in FFT had any personality

author=heisenman
I never understood why you are so attached to this project.

maybe because it's an interesting setting with interesting characters and it inspires the creator to take their creations to new depths/heights

I never understood why you would go out of your way to make such a retarded comment

There's actually an article (or multiple articles) on exactly this topic.

Basically: give them personality.

NPCs should not be randomly wandering; try to make them, say, go over to the woodpile, idle there for a minute, then walk back to their house, wait there for a minute, rinse repeat. So ostensibly this person is stacking wood or something. Even if they aren't sprited as carrying anything, and even if the player never sees them stop at the wood pile or their house, they'll recognize the pattern of movement as the NPC being engaged in some activity.

Memorable secondary NPC:
That kid in FF6 who constantly slides down the banister then runs back up the stairs

author=Sam
The villain, after defeating you, uses a machine to extract your powers and physically weakens you.

I have just extracted one year of your life. How do you feel?



WWWUUUUAAAAAAUUGGGGHHHH