Advice you don't agree with?

[48Tentacles]

Appeal to a wider audience

I'm gonna summarize this as best as I can.

There is a flaw when it comes to appealing to a wider audience in comparison with a targeted niche audience. It's not good to appeal to the wider audience when your competition is doing this which leads to a result of a over saturated "wider audience" market. Take a look at certain genres of shooting games. How many popular Battle Royale games do you see? I am going to gamble and name a few ones: Fortnite, Battle Unknown Battlegrounds, Call of Duty Black Ops, Rings of Elysium, Apex Legends, The Culling (which is already cancelled because the devs changed the fundamentals of its design, leading to furious players quitting the game), and a special game mode of Counter Strike Global Offensive.

Sure, you can argue that the wider audience has the biggest number in potential customers, but they also have the biggest number of companies and developers appealing to them. Hence the name of wider audience. Have you noticed when in the early 2000s there was an interest of the MMORPGs, specifically World of Warcraft? There were around 30 million subscribers in that game if I had to guess. At that time the competition went "hey guys, let's make a WoW killer, let's copypaste teh interface and everything, it's gonna be great!" and make WoW clones with bugs without even considering the WoW players are heavily invested in the lore of that game. In this particular story, the copycats tried to appeal to the WoW audience instead of the MMORPG audience.

Knowing this, if you still intend to appeal to the wider audience, at least take a moment to remember the previously mentioned The Culling or even Lawbreakers, which dared to compete Overwatch. The servers of The Culling and Lawbreakers were shut down.

I've got more advice that I disagree with, but this is one I disagree most.

Edit: Added image of relevance.

 

[Tamina]

On the topic of length, I understand a short RPG is unlikely to get enough time to properly develop an interesting cast and story, several characters, all their skills, spells and equipment.

I think it's doable if you cut down the combat/walking portion of a game. Whether your target audience like that is another question though.

Think about it, most visual novel has 5-10hr of playtime with plenty of interesting cast and story. But most 30-60hr JRPG made by big Japanese developers has less than 10hr of cutscenes.

For example, Xenosaga EP1, a game that's well known for heavy cutscenes, has 7hr of cutscenes according to YouTube cutscene videos. FFX has about 10 hr of cutscenes, Valkyrie Profile 2 has 4-5hr of cutscenes. All these games take 30-50hr to complete.

Basically, most JRPG are long because of all the walking and combat animation. Story wise it's usually not that much longer than most VN.

So if your 10hr game has 3hr of walking/combat and 7hr of dialogues, it will have as much story as 30-40hr Xenosaga EP1. The only issue with this approach is that many JRPG fans play games for combat, not reading. But it's totally doable if your goal is to make a VN with light RPG element/combat and aim for VN players who enjoys reading more than combat.

 

[rpgLord69]

I think it's doable if you cut down the combat/walking portion of a game. Whether your target audience like that is another question though.

Think about it, most visual novel has 5-10hr of playtime with plenty of interesting cast and story. But most 30-60hr JRPG made by big Japanese developers has less than 10hr of cutscenes.

For example, Xenosaga EP1, a game that's well known for heavy cutscenes, has 7hr of cutscenes according to YouTube cutscene videos. FFX has about 10 hr of cutscenes, Valkyrie Profile 2 has 4-5hr of cutscenes. All these games take 30-50hr to complete.

Basically, most JRPG are long because of all the walking and combat animation. Story wise it's usually not that much longer than most VN.

So if your 10hr game has 3hr of walking/combat and 7hr of dialogues, it will have as much story as 30-40hr Xenosaga EP1. The only issue with this approach is that many JRPG fans play games for combat, not reading. But it's totally doable if your goal is to make a VN with light RPG element/combat and aim for VN players who enjoys reading more than combat.

True, but also that walking/combat downtime allows you to tell the story in a different way, because it gives time between scenes and events.

 

[Tamina]

Are there any others from you that you tend to not agree with and if so, why?

When people discuss game engine in game dev community I frequently see this: "Engine doesn't matter if your game is good, use whatever engine you want". I think engine matters very much depending on your goals.

RM is still my No.1 choice for game jams and trying new game mechanics for quick feedbacks. Because it's so fast to create a functional game loop with RM. And I don't have to wait forever to open the program, unlike bigger and heavier engines like Unity.

But for bigger commercial projects, it can be extremely time consuming to polish or add "juice" to your RM game for commercial level of polish. Little details like menu transition fade in/out, character movement animation fade in/out, subtle camera movement and such can take a long time to implement in RM due to the lack of available (and functional) tools and frameworks.

There are many engines on the market and all of them has different strength and weaknesses. For example Unity is still unmatched for commercial game dev with a small team due to huge amount of pre-made tools and frameworks available. RM/GMS2/Godot is good for short game jams or testing ideas for feedback, or if you use a potato PC. Unreal has the best 3D graphics etc.
IMO it's quite important to learn which engine being the best for that particular project and goals.

 

[Tamina]

The minute you try to create for other people first is the minute you lose your identity and your integrity.

"Do what you want" and "create what others want" aren't mutually exclusive though. Most of the time, an experienced game designer will find a good balance between them.

Screw it. Go right in. Give your fantastic story ideas the space they need to breathe. Use two hundred plugins. Do it all - allow feature creep. Go big and overblown.

Some advice is so counter productive to creativity, and this is the big one.

I personally don't see how "use 200 plugins" and "Go big and overblown" can be associated with having creativity though.

From my experience RM can act very weird once you have more than 50 plugins because they conflict with each other. I've used way more than 50 plugins and a lot of default and plugin features broke past that number. It doesn't matter how creative you are, if your project isn't working as intended because one of your plugin broke then your creativity can't be realized. I think it's perfectly reasonable to limit plugin use because of that.

Same can be said about implementing lots of features. I've seen many games(AAA games even) with mechanics or features that doesn't add anything to the core gameplay experience. The feature is there, but it's rarely used by the player or just not fun to play with. Then you may as well cut it out and it's not going to affect the playing experience at all.

The reason why many people suggest "keep it small" for new developers isn't because creativity isn't important, but because new developers tend to make mistakes. Such as adding useless gameplay features that doesn't add anything to the creative vision that they have.

Once a developer has more experience, they can realize their creative vision more efficiently and accurately by being more precise on implementing new feature and mechanics. At that point they can add more plugins or features because they know exactly what to use and what to cut.

It's like how a great artist like Monet didn't paint impressive painting from the get go. He probably started with sketching simple shapes like cylinders and balls for months until he had the skill to do awesome paintings. Realizing creative vision effectively requires skills and experience. Just having "creativity" isn't enough.

And IMO, a developer who builds 1 small project per 1-2 weeks for 2 months straight probably gets game design experience faster than a developer who spent 3 years for one single big project because every development cycle gives you valuable experience that you can't get until you finish a project. I also feel it's easier to stay motivated by completing smaller projects in a shorter timeframe.

I personally see "keep it small" as a very good advice to give for new game designers. I don't think it hinders creativity, it's likely the other way around for most people.

 

[Sword_of_Dusk]

It is also the factor that I did not go far enough with TES 4: Oblivion after playing Skyrim first. Also, the factor why I couldn't come back to New Vegas after finishing Fallout 4. I actually played New Vegas many years ago and I have no idea why I managed to bear with the graphics.

"Graphics doesn't matter" comes from people who are disappointed with the dev who made an effort into the graphics, but the gameplay wasn't fun. So they make that conclusion. It is best not to take this advice out of context. The better advice is "Don't forget about the gameplay".

Oof. I played Fallout 4, but New Vegas is still top dog for me. I don't give a damn about the graphics. The gameplay was more fun to me.

And honestly, there's very few times where graphics have turned me off.

 

[C64_Mat]

"Do what you want" and "create what others want" aren't mutually exclusive though. Most of the time, an experienced game designer will find a good balance between them.



I personally don't see how "use 200 plugins" and "Go big and overblown" can be associated with having creativity though.

From my experience RM can act very weird once you have more than 50 plugins because they conflict with each other. I've used way more than 50 plugins and a lot of default and plugin features broke past that number. It doesn't matter how creative you are, if your project isn't working as intended because one of your plugin broke then your creativity can't be realized. I think it's perfectly reasonable to limit plugin use because of that.

Same can be said about implementing lots of features. I've seen many games(AAA games even) with mechanics or features that doesn't add anything to the core gameplay experience. The feature is there, but it's rarely used by the player or just not fun to play with. Then you may as well cut it out and it's not going to affect the playing experience at all.

The reason why many people suggest "keep it small" for new developers isn't because creativity isn't important, but because new developers tend to make mistakes. Such as adding useless gameplay features that doesn't add anything to the creative vision that they have.

Once a developer has more experience, they can realize their creative vision more efficiently and accurately by being more precise on implementing new feature and mechanics. At that point they can add more plugins or features because they know exactly what to use and what to cut.

It's like how a great artist like Monet didn't paint impressive painting from the get go. He probably started with sketching simple shapes like cylinders and balls for months until he had the skill to do awesome paintings. Realizing creative vision effectively requires skills and experience. Just having "creativity" isn't enough.

And IMO, a developer who builds 1 small project per 1-2 weeks for 2 months straight probably gets game design experience faster than a developer who spent 3 years for one single big project because every development cycle gives you valuable experience that you can't get until you finish a project. I also feel it's easier to stay motivated by completing smaller projects in a shorter timeframe.

I personally see "keep it small" as a very good advice to give for new game designers. I don't think it hinders creativity, it's likely the other way around for most people.

You're doing exactly what I have a problem with - taking your own experience and putting it forward as de rigueur.

"It's likely the other way around for most people". No, for you. Speak for yourself.

"A developer probably gets experience faster..." Based on what? Again, based on nothing.

"Gives you valuable experience you can't get until you finish a project". Bullshit - the experience is gained through the journey, not at the finish line. What is that meant to be based on?

Your Monet stuff is laughable. On the contrary, he sketched caricatures of people for a living until he met a Dutch artist that piqued his interest in painting. Again, conjecture on your part based on nothing at all.

"Adding useless gameplay features". One man's trash...

"Just not fun to play with". For you. You're perpetuating the idiotic idea that something which isn't fun for you is the same for everyone. This is EXACTLY why you create for yourself first! You cannot create by second guessing what others want! You're simply proving my point here.

"More than 50 plugins..." The number is arbitrary. Two plugins doing the same thing might break your game. 100 doing different things might not.

Breaking your own game is a learning process at any rate. That's why I suggest going overblown - it helps you to understand what works and what doesn't based on your own experience, and how you can find your way around the issues.

Your post is exactly the kind of advice I ignore.

 

[TheoAllen]

"Gives you valuable experience you can't get until you finish a project". Bullshit - the experience is gained through the journey, not at the finish line. What is that meant to be based on?

As someone who finished a project, let me give you a perspective. Yes, a journey gives you experience. Finishing a project in another hand gives another experience. The line is not saying the journey is useless. But there is something you can get by finishing a project.

What kind of experience?
First of all, the ability to compromise.
Second of all, the ability to manage tasks and deadlines.

By not finishing a project, you can get experience by doing it over and over. Perhaps you can get better at doing stuff, doing events, making plugins, and making everything.

By finishing a project, you can get an ability of "This isn't important", "Let's cut this out of the project because it might take time to do and the deadline is approaching". Essentially, it is a management skill. A finished project means proof that you can manage it.

Each piece of advice has its own wisdom.
You just need to understand where it comes from and to see if it is compatible with your goal. No need to completely dismiss it.

 

[Lunesis]

I think the reason people say to start small is because most new devs don't understand the real man hours that have to go into it. If you want to make that game in your head inspired by your nostalgia from the 90's, you're going to be spending YEARS, not months but years getting it right. Making a game is like adopting a new pet. That idea you have in your head, you don't realize how incorporeal it is until you start needing to flesh out the details and the world building while not just blatantly ripping off something else. I am at 1000 hours currently and only about 20% done in all honesty, but I also find the deeper you get into it, the easier it is to keep going.

Despite this, I decided to start with my big project. I just don't see the time value in doing a small project. It's all time that could be devoted to making the one project that you really want to do, better. So what if my coding isn't perfect or my events are a bit messy, the player will not see that as long as there are no bugs. That and you can go back and edit if something is not to your liking. The good thing about RPG Maker is that nothing is permanent. Anything can be fixed as long as you know the source of the problem.

I am having more fun just doing my big project rather than having to divert and try to be creative all over again with new characters and a new setting/world or something. I feel like creativity is the fun factor with this software, sharing it with others and Steam sales are just a bonus. If I wanted to be miserable making a game I would go work for some big game dev company that tells you exactly what to make.

 

[DrBuni]

Appeal to a wider audience

I'm gonna summarize this as best as I can.

There is a flaw when it comes to appealing to a wider audience in comparison with a targeted niche audience. It's not good to appeal to the wider audience when your competition is doing this which leads to a result of a over saturated "wider audience" market. Take a look at certain genres of shooting games. How many popular Battle Royale games do you see? I am going to gamble and name a few ones: Fortnite, Battle Unknown Battlegrounds, Call of Duty Black Ops, Rings of Elysium, Apex Legends, The Culling (which is already cancelled because the devs changed the fundamentals of its design, leading to furious players quitting the game), and a special game mode of Counter Strike Global Offensive.

Sure, you can argue that the wider audience has the biggest number in potential customers, but they also have the biggest number of companies and developers appealing to them. Hence the name of wider audience. Have you noticed when in the early 2000s there was an interest of the MMORPGs, specifically World of Warcraft? There were around 30 million subscribers in that game if I had to guess. At that time the competition went "hey guys, let's make a WoW killer, let's copypaste teh interface and everything, it's gonna be great!" and make WoW clones with bugs without even considering the WoW players are heavily invested in the lore of that game. In this particular story, the copycats tried to appeal to the WoW audience instead of the MMORPG audience.

Knowing this, if you still intend to appeal to the wider audience, at least take a moment to remember the previously mentioned The Culling or even Lawbreakers, which dared to compete Overwatch. The servers of The Culling and Lawbreakers were shut down.

I've got more advice that I disagree with, but this is one I disagree most.

Edit: Added image of relevance.

Appealing to a wider audience has been working greatly for ATLUS, to the point even their most niche series (like mainline Shin Megami Tensei) are being affected and "Personafied". Other than that, I agree with you. As a micro indie developer, you have no business trying to appeal to the widest audiences possible. You likely don't have funds nor time nor the influence to reach all audiences, and you are better off making a niche game and creating a business around a specific kind of experience.

Pick a game or series you like (even better if it is something that isn't super overdone), or some kind of experience you want to offer, and focus on the players who like that kind of game and experience. If people from adjacent audiences find your game and love it, that is great, but focus is important.

 

[Tamina]

You're doing exactly what I have a problem with - taking your own experience and putting it forward as de rigueur.

You take people's "advice" way too negatively if you think advice = de rigueur.

Most of the time, people ask for advice because they need some kind of direction. In that case, posters posting their OPINIONS about the best way to do things is helping them, not the other way around.

If someone come to the forum and ask "help, I can't finish my project" are you going to reply with "go big and overblown" or "do anything you want as long as you are happy" when that clearly isn't helping them? What's wrong with giving them directions to solve their problem?

"Gives you valuable experience you can't get until you finish a project". Bullshit - the experience is gained through the journey, not at the finish line. What is that meant to be based on?

There is a reason why experienced game designers prototype, and prototype a lot. Because sometimes players play your game very differently from what you would imagined. Very frequently certain design doesn't work the way you want to, and that hinders so called "creativity".

Unless you are experienced, you only really know this when you complete a game loop and get feedback from your players. Therefore, the finish line is just as important as the journey.

A prototype or smaller project isn't something you create and throw away like trash. It can be an iteration of your "dream game" containing the core loop. By finishing a smaller game loop with the core feature, and release it to your audience, you gain valuable information on what works and what doesn't. Then your next iteration can be built on that. Which is another step closer to your dream project. Smaller project is not as worthless as you think. It's often the cornerstone of a bigger, complex project.

That's why many VERY good commercial indie games came from game jams!

"A developer probably gets experience faster..." Based on what? Again, based on nothing.

If you think those opinions are based on "nothing", I suggest you read "The Art of Game Design" by Jesse Schell and "Game Thinking" by Amy Jo King.

These people design games for decades they wrote the exact same thing about prototyping and iteration. And their practice was followed by many game designers in the industry.

If such practice is based on nothing, why would game designers in the industry follow them? It must have some values IMO.

If you think their opinion is "nothing" and not worth reading. It's your choice. But surely others can give it as an advice to people who needs it?

Your Monet stuff is laughable. On the contrary, he sketched caricatures of people for a living until he met a Dutch artist that piqued his interest in painting. Again, conjecture on your part based on nothing at all.

Why is it laughable? Afaik most artists at that time learned their art fundamentals in Atelier/art school before they start their career. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atelier

If you read Monet's wiki it clearly says "On 1851 he entered Le Havre secondary school of the arts"

Claude Monet - Wikipedia

en.m.wikipedia.org

He clearly practiced fundamentals at art school before he "sketched caricatures of people for a living". I find it hard to imagine someone magically has the skill to sketch caricatures of people on streets before they learn fundamentals of art in schools first.

A genius can, maybe. But I can't assume those who seeks advice on forums has natural talents to instantly gain all the design skills without learning. I see nothing wrong to gain design skills with faster project cycles, for most people at least.

"Just not fun to play with". For you. You're perpetuating the idiotic idea that something which isn't fun for you is the same for everyone.

You misunderstood. I said the exact opposite. Something you find fun may not be fun for everyone else until you let others try your mechanics. THEN you know.

You cannot create by second guessing what others want!

EXACTLY! And this is EXACTLY why prototyping with smaller project is important. So you no longer need to second guess anything, because you have the data that you need to make precise decisions. So you can create what you really want with good result.

Your post is exactly the kind of advice I ignore.

I didn't give you any "advice" since you didn't ask for any. I only presented my opinion about this topic and backed them up with books and wiki info. (FYI: Which you didn't do before you attacked every point that I made with just feelings.)

I think you misunderstood a lot of my points but honestly, if you think they are all worthless then so be it.

 

[Tamina]

Despite this, I decided to start with my big project. I just don't see the time value in doing a small project.

The time value of smaller project is usually unseen until you finished your dream project, IMO. This has more to do with design and less to do with coding nor using the engine.

Think about it, using RM I can finish one small RTP project/prototype in 1-3 days. A more complext mechanic may take me a week most. So in 2 weeks I can create anywhere from 4-7 small prototypes, or 2 complex mechanics. 2 weeks to 1 month of prototyping is relatively small time investment in game development since a complex dream game can take YEARS to make. Having all the system and mechanics decided early can save you a lot of time later on.

This is assuming you don't spend 3 month on your small projects, obviously. Small projects for learning should be done fast in a few days. Never spend more than a couple of days on small project for learning purposes.

Case to the point, when I began my game dev journey I started on a big and complex project right from the get go like many people advocated in this thread(a decision that I really regret now). I used waterfall approach so I built first 30% of game, got testers. Built next 30%, got testers again until it's done.

By the time alpha reached 90% I found a critical design flaw in the core mechanic but at that time it's already too late to change anything because I can't throw MONTHS of progress away. I wished I knew that earlier with smaller prototypes. In the end such design flaw just stayed there until release which brought bad player reaction.

Another example, when I did my alpha test one of the tester demended certain feature to be implemented, so I spent another MONTH to implement such feature to the whole game. It was a lot of work because the game was nearly done.

It turns out that after release 90% of players don't even use such feature. So I spent a month on a useless feature that most players don't care. Again, I wish I know this from prototype because 1 week of time wasted is still a smaller investment than 1 month of work.

In the end I think I averaged close to 150 hour development time per 1 hr of gameplay. This is 50% higher than 100hr average commonly seen in the community. The development time sky rocked because all the changes made very late in the development: features got added, then removed again. This process of adding and removing features is way more time consuming to do late in the development. It should really have been decided early with prototypes.

Because of reasons above, I wouldn't say small project is bad time investment. Anyone can choose how they use their time. If for whatever reason you have FUN building big project and FUN is all you care, by all means start with a big project. But if someone come to a forum and ask for advice about their project because they are stuck, fat chance is that they have more goals in mind than simply having fun. In that case "build more prototypes" is IMO, one of the best advice which solves many game dev problems.

 

[Shaz]

@Tamina, please avoid double posting, as it is against the forum rules. You can use the "Edit" function on your posts to add additional information you've forgotten or respond to multiple people. You can review our forum rules here. Thank you.

 

[Sarisa]

For me it would be "your game must have re-playability" which I've seen people attempt to implement by adding procedural generation, NG+ content, and/or a huge variety of classes and skill trees. As someone who plays games mainly for the story, none of those matter to me because after finishing the story the novelty wears off, so I'm not going to replay the game regardless. I'd rather the time, budget, and polish go into making the initial run the best it can possibly be since that's all most players are going to see anyway.

I've also seen this advice used to encourage multiple endings, but that's in a weird spot for me. In visual novels I love having multiple endings because I can skip past everything I saw in previous playthroughs so I'm not forced to sit through the same stuff twice. In RPGs however you generally can't do that for various reasons, and I don't want to replay through tons of content I've already seen just for a few different scenes and a new ending. If I really care I'll just look up the ending on YouTube at that point, but it still makes me feel like I'm "missing out" on experiencing it myself which isn't fun.

 

[TheoAllen]

Regarding replayability, it is a valid reason. Especially if we are using RPG Maker anyway. It's an engine for storytelling, not for procedural generation games or games with tons of content. It isn't impossible, but it is unsolicited advice for RPG Maker users.

I, personally love replayability and tons of content to explore (skill trees, various builds, map to explore, etc). That doesn't mean I'm going to make the same thing in RPG Maker

 

[The Stranger]

Replayability is good if it's meaningful. However, even a game devoid of alternate paths and changes of any kind still has replayability - a person can simply replay it later on if they enjoyed it before. I've replayed a lot of singleplayer games that have no diverging paths, multiple endings, or randomised crap. The game was the same as when I first played it, and I enjoyed replaying it multiple times simply because I enjoyed the game for what it was.

 

[BK-tdm]

On the "make the game you want to play" topic, thats what im doing because my focus point for people to see is not actually my game, but my art, the custom spriteworks, busts, facesets and animations, thats what i want to showcase, my main project so far has been for my personal enjoyment maybe this applies to plugin devs too?

On the "replace RTP asap"... how dare you? the rtp when expanded on is and can be gorgeous, sprites dont have to be static, they can wink, laugh, cry, and much more, its just sad that the other 3000 crappy mapped rtp games made for quick buck gave it that level of bad rep but i for one, love the rtp.

On that... weird "Don't make a game that you want to play" its like studying cooking to cook dishes you hate, they will taste horrible and you will go broke because you cant stand to eat them yourself hence you wont taste and improve, you just do it because you think thats what people like, you know what happens to games like that? Anthem happens, current world of warcraft shadowlands happens, effing forced diversity in games happen, if you wont eat it, dont serve it to anyone else...

 

[RCXGaming]

For me it would be "your game must have re-playability" which I've seen people attempt to implement by adding procedural generation, NG+ content, and/or a huge variety of classes and skill trees. As someone who plays games mainly for the story, none of those matter to me because after finishing the story the novelty wears off, so I'm not going to replay the game regardless. I'd rather the time, budget, and polish go into making the initial run the best it can possibly be since that's all most players are going to see anyway.

I've also seen this advice used to encourage multiple endings, but that's in a weird spot for me. In visual novels I love having multiple endings because I can skip past everything I saw in previous playthroughs so I'm not forced to sit through the same stuff twice. In RPGs however you generally can't do that for various reasons, and I don't want to replay through tons of content I've already seen just for a few different scenes and a new ending. If I really care I'll just look up the ending on YouTube at that point, but it still makes me feel like I'm "missing out" on experiencing it myself which isn't fun.

Wait people actually say this? That said I agree on a few levels.

Unless I enjoy the battle system and/or there's significant enough story behind the postgame, I generally stop after I reach the first intended ending.

I like Chrono Trigger's spin on it but it was also never enough for me to really chase after all of the extra time specific endings barring the special green NG+ Gate right at the start. Since it's literally a minute into replaying the game.

If you cap things off well enough during the main story you shouldn't have to put in more content unless it's an extension of what made the main story attractive in the first place. (Aka. Not random challenge missions or more quests that don't have any real significance or character beyond "hey here's a thing/more EXP you don't need unless you're going up against the superbossees")

Don't put 10 pounds of oranges in a 5 pound bag, essentially.

 

[ericv00]

What gives a game replayability? How could one give that advice without understanding how complex that first question is?

I've played FF6 more than 10 times. There was the first time. The second because I enjoyed the first time. The third time where I tried to go through the whole game without saving. Several times to try to break certain segments. And my extreme low-level run, which I will probably eventually attempt again (most characters were level 10-12 and I think I can achieve average level <10). The story doesn't change. The dungeons don't change. The equipment doesn't change.

I mean, just take a look at the speedrunning community...

Sometimes people try to play your game in unintended ways, making almost any game potentially and unintentionally replayable.

 

[RCXGaming]

What gives a game replayability? How could one give that advice without understanding how complex that first question is?

I've played FF6 more than 10 times. There was the first time. The second because I enjoyed the first time. The third time where I tried to go through the whole game without saving. Several times to try to break certain segments. And my extreme low-level run, which I will probably eventually attempt again (most characters were level 10-12 and I think I can achieve average level <10). The story doesn't change. The dungeons don't change. The equipment doesn't change.

I mean, just take a look at the speedrunning community...

Sometimes people try to play your game in unintended ways, making almost any game potentially and unintentionally replayable.

There is this too. Sometimes replayability is just that you liked the game enough you want to do it again.

I feel the original statement was against artificially inflating your game with extraneous content because it'll be more worth players time or something. Quality vs. Quanity is how I took it.