AMERK'S PROFILE

Definitely enjoyable, in spite of the combat. But in a way, the combat felt second nature to me, and not really the focus, since it wasn't a grind-heavy game, so the atmosphere surrounding the game, the puzzle moments, the story and music, and the relatively easy combat made up for it.

author=kentona
Also, I need to figure out a good way to deal with reviews for Demos vs Full versions of the game, and episodic games... and also to deal with reviews for games for which the creator up and quit RMN because butthurt (and now the reviewer's review is "lost"), and also considering a "Was this review helpful?" kind of thing, to promote GOOD reviews.

What about archiving reviews for demo's that have become complete and for games that have disappeared? That way the review isn't lost, but not impacting the full game's score either. Another ideas is to not allow for scores to be chosen for demos, but only full games. That way, the review still appears in the full game, but no score to impact the actual completed game.

I also like the idea of a "helpful" feature for reviews. The more helpful a review was, the higher up in the list, which may be more beneficial than ranking it by the score.

Also, I did have this sort of idea, which is inspired by suggestions in previous discussions:

What about creating a semi-review template that people can use? It'd have basic Q&A to fill out with a score. Some people either can't be bothered to write a full review, or don't care to write one for a game they weren't particularly fond of, or didn't spend a lot of time on. And then there are very short games where a full review would be too hard to write.

So they can fill this template out, apply a score, and call it good. The caveat being, they'd only get like 5 or 10 MS points, instead of the 50 given for full reviews.

Something like:

*What did you like most about this game?
*What did you like least?
*How were the game mechanics? Were there problems playing the game? (check NA if not applicable)
*How was the story? Was it well written or full of misspellings and grammar mistakes? (check NA if not applicable)
*How was the mapping and level design? (check NA if not applicable)
*What score would you give this game?
Make each category required to be filled out to be approved.

Even if a full fledged review is more ideal, there are times when it's not possible to write one, and in those cases the developer has to rely on comments instead. This way, even if somebody is too lazy to do a review or simply can't, the developer is getting feedback they can use.

Remove the rating from reviews, problem solved, or at least hide it within the review to encourage people to actually read the reviews first before deciding whether to play a game or not.

That way, people don't just judge a game by what one person rated it, without going in and reading the review for themselves. There have been several games that I enjoyed that had low star ratings. Had I decided to not play the game because of the rating, I would have missed out. Instead, I chose to go into the reviews and read what made it get a low star, and discovered some of the things people had issues about, didn't bother me too much.

The problem I think is that too many people search for games based on a star-rating (but never actually read the reviews for themselves), and then get mad when a 5-star rated game turns out to be trash and the rate was unjustified, and likewise for the 1-star game they passed up because some angry troll decided to trash the game.

Remove the rate or hide it in the review itself. Then people are at least visiting the review before making a decision. Sure, if you hide it within the review, some will probably visit the review page to get the total score and exit again without reading the review; but others will hopefully figure that since they're there, they may as well read what somebody wrote.

What Konami seems to understand, and other companies fail to, is that not only allowing fan games to continue, but also giving them their blessing, provides publicity to the company and their games.

Sure, if Konami had been planning to remake the game themselves, they may have had a difference of opinion, but they've moved on the MGS series a long time ago. But Outer Heaven is remaking an old NES game that is barely available to the masses and that Konami probably no longer makes a profit from, or has much interest in.

Even the old Enix understood this. That's why we have Dragon's Den, and from what I recall they're aware that people use their old NES rips and audio in these fan games. It's a great way to get fans involved and happy, and even encourages them to go out and buy the legit products as well.

Too bad Square never realized this when they shut down the CT project years back.

McBick, are you asking this from a developer's point of view or the players? That may help us understand a bit more.

From a developer's point of view, there is no real difference. If you want to implement a save anywhere feature in your game, this can already be done with RPG Maker. It's the default option. In such a case, both a save state and save files would essentially be the same thing, the only difference being a save state may allow you to save mid-battle or a cut scene. I suppose in the case of a really long battle or cut scene, a save point could be useful, but otherwise, it doesn't make sense to have two systems that do the same thing.

If a developer plans on save points a the sole means, then as LockeZ pointed out a Quick Save is the best option for players, so they can leave the game when necessary.

I'd still avoid saving anywhere in the middle of a battle or cut scene, as it seems redundant and more work than necessary.

However, if you're talking about this from a player's point of view, that would make more sense, especially in game's where the developer has implemented save points and removed the ability to save anywhere. This is really no different than an emulator allowing save states (to save your progress anywhere you'd like) for games that either didn't have saves or had specific save points.

The problem here, though, is the player more than likely would need a tool that would break the developer's intended design of the game. For emulators, roms, and hacks of known commercial/console games, that may be acceptable, but it's usually frowned upon with the RPG Maker community to find ways to circumvent each other's games without approval from the developer. After all, it's assumed if the developer intends for players to change the way their games work, they'd leave them decrypted anyways.