WEARY_OWL'S PROFILE

author=Isrieri

author=LockeZ
I'm thinking of solving this by making the normal battles only give money, not XP, and having XP granted only by bosses. Or maybe just making only the unavoidable battles give XP (about half of the battles simply block the path and can't be skipped).

I tried doing this in a game I was working on a while back, and my solution was no XP at all, rather basing all of the player's stat on equipment and items. To make treasure hunting and exploration more rewarding, and to have them play on the defensive a lot: Problem with that is that running away from enemies was usually the most optimal solution. That's kind of what I was going for though.

I reduced the stat bonuses on levelling up so strength is predominantly based on equipment and skills learned. You learn skills from equipment so exploration, drops and crafting are more relevant. You gain the experience to permanently learn an ability via battles so fighting enemies is more about acquiring skills rather than levels. Skills are relatively inexpensive to learn to encourage trying new equipment options and building up a set of skills. Materials are found littered throughout areas though some enemies do drop them at a very high likelihood.

It's not a perfect solution but it rewards exploration, encourages getting into a handful of battles and grinding is kept to a minimum.

Start a side project to help you test ideas/coding/battles. This'll help you familiarise yourself with the engine and iron out major problems in a separate environment. Flexibility is key, don't get too stuck on an idea or plot point if it's not working. Throwing away an idea or concept is sometimes the best thing you can do. Don't jump into the deep end straight away, practice with simple ideas and get a feel for it. Complexity is developed from simplicity; you wouldn't build the second floor to a house without being confident the foundations of the building are safe and will support anything on top of it.

Keep an external document or series of notes planning out the basics of your game, your story, some of the main characters, key events and plot points and work from there. You could use flow charts to plan out major plot or character arcs and see how they fit together and see what effect switching the order might have.

Graphically I tend to use place-holders for characters/monsters when testing battles or dungeon/map design. When designing a map drawing the overall layout first is a better idea than focusing on each small part of it at a time otherwise you'll find yourself getting boxed in. I had this problem for a while and I had to keep changing the size of the map and if you discover the map isn't as interesting as you'd hoped or is no longer necessary you haven't lost as much.

I always clear the database completely other than the default animations so I can start fresh and add things as they are needed. I tend to leave space for future items to be clustered together. For skillsets I label who they're for especially if there's multiple versions for enemy/player skills.

The key thing is keep testing how each aspect of your game works on their own and in relation with each other before you start inventing complex systems and plots and replacing all your placeholders in case you have to scrap something.