ZEELLO'S PROFILE

I do this often in games where I enjoy all of the characters, and I like to mix up my party to keep things exciting and fresh from different views of gameplay and plot contribution.

Presumably the player did not make the game. As a player, I don't know whether I was meant to change my characters on purpose and if there are any reasons as to why I should other than "just because". If I go out of my way to change characters simply because of a superstitious assumption that the game wanted me to, that be would me holding the game's hand. But the player should never be expected to hold the game's hand in order to make it better, especially not if the player is imposed with a challenge and difficulty that he or she is intended to overcome using any of the means you've offered to them. You can't say "beat this boss" only to go on to say "wait, but don't equip that weapon, it's too powerful and will make the game a joke. You should have known that. That weapon was 'optional.'"

If I see a weapon and it has a higher attack stat than my current weapon, I will be right to equip it. Likewise but if the player is offered a multitude of characters to choose from but perceives no benefit to switching out of his existing party, then you've devolved it into a weird mind game of "should I switch characters simply because the game is offering me a choice to switch characters". Certainly the player will notice if there are 20 cast members in a game but decides to forgo all but 4 of them, and may realize that something is awry. But this is a meta sort of observation and irrelevant to the task of simply sitting back and playing the game.

Not if the game distributes EXP evenly, which is very easy to do.

True, but this isn't itself an incentive to switch party members.

I wish to make it so my protagonist learns his first spell at a fixed point in the story, right before the first boss. Ideally his MP bar would be hidden until that point. (If I can find a way of doing that) (but maybe it's not that important, since its better to have MP in advance instead of having it suddenly show up out of nowhere)

For the rest of the game, spells would be learned from leveling. But maybe I should introduce them at fixed points. I dunno. We'll see.
Or maybe pay to learn skills. But that seems iffy because your be forced to choose between spells and buying something else. This is why shops suck.

disregard this post

13 years? I was hoping to finish it this summer. :<

I drew 9 pages of maps for the Eiffel Tower. I need a tileset. It doesn't have to be realistic. Probably anything remotely steampunk-ish or mechanical will suffice.

I've cut Titanic from the game. The game will be
1) prologue, tank boss named Goliath, Cain joins your party
2) rainy battlefield, tank boss, Bacon joins party
3) sandy battlefield, tank boss, Albert joins party
4) Eiffel Tower
5) Vatican
6) America/New York
7) big bad's fortress, final boss, the end

It will be called "Legends of World War I"
The Japan segment, will be a separate game I will make when this game is done. (so, never) No idea what it will be named. Oh, that's right, I think I was gonna name it "Meanwhile in Japan"

EDIT:
http://www.tobiasgame.co.uk/about.php
I'm avoiding most of the mistakes he made. For instance I'm using RPGM and not making massive tweaks to it aside from scripts others have offered. I'm not likely to switch engine or RPGM version at this point. The gameplay will have relatively little in the way of variety or puzzles. Also, I've already cut a lot of content from the game, even Japan and the Titanic which I was emotionally attached to, so I definitely don't have the problem of trying to stick to a particular plan too rigidly.

EDIT: Now I'm considering cutting New York from the game, and just have everything take place at the Vatican instead. The reasoning being that I don't want to end up having to scrounge for tilesets to build my New York, whereas The Vatican will only need cathedral, castle, and dungeon themed tilesets, which are typical RPG motifs and therefore should be in abundant supply. But, maybe I can just use those types of tilesets to make New York, since most of it will take place in underground castles, and sewers, neither of which should be a problem.

Anyway I'm using this tileset to make the Eiffel Tower.
http://forums.rpgmakerweb.com/index.php?/topic/479-icys-modernfuturistic-tiles/
I hate making it, dunno why. Apparently I have ADHD or something, because after finishing one screen I want to do something else more than anything. But so far it's looking alright.

61 tiles wide, 40 tiles high

author=unity
For example, I've heard on more than one occasion "How can you like this song? It's terrible, the singer's barely in tune"

I was under the impression that this was an unavoidable part of liking ANY music.