Advice you don't agree with?

[The Stranger]

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

This is pretty much the main reason I bother to replay games. In fact, totally randomised worlds tend to be a major turn off for me. I like handcrafted areas, and don't care if they're the same over and over again.

 

[Synrec]

Telling people not to use RPG Maker.

 

[Benny Jackdaw]

"There's nothing new under the sun/Cliches are great when done right."

While this advice isn't so much horrible, it is often times used to justify some of the most overused and worn-out cliches, and oftentimes feels like it's used as a justification for writing the same stories and characters over and over. I've been writing this book lately, and part of the fun of writing the book has been coming up with all these different races, locations, story elements that combine my favorite kind of characters with a message I want to tell (anti-bullying). Sure, it's going to fall onto cliches quite a bit, but that advice shouldn't be an excuse not to try anything new. You can STILL have cliches qnd try something new at the same time, so don't be afraid to try something new. Also...

"Visuals don't mayter. They're skin deep."

I don't agree with this at all. My favorite characters are the ones that have visual appeal as well as good writing. Good visual appeal allows a character to just pop off the screen, and it makes them more fun and enjoyable to watch. Even in a book, I can still visualize the character. I've seen the generic anime Swordsman pull off some super powered sword combo a hundred times. It doesn't entertain me anymore. But if something unique and something I haven't seen before were to do it like, say, a samurai wombat pulling off a similar combo against an evil bunny monster or something outside the box like that, THAT entertains me.

 

[Willibab]

Answers depends on the question being asked. If you ask for general advice then you will get it. And a general concern is standing out, of which i think its good advice to suggest having your own art or doing something special with the rtp.

 

[PoptartPresident]

It's kind of rare to be said, but it's anyone saying, "Don't use the generic assets for your game."

Guys, making artwork is really HARD for a LOT of people. Especially since RPG Maker is pretty pixel-perfect with everything, I don't blame someone for not really knowing how to work with sprites and models. People always forget how hard it is to make artwork because on the internet, you'll pretty much always see the sea of beautiful pieces made by really high-followings on something like google images, or most social media websites. It seems so widespread, but it really is an uncommon skill to come across in the real world.

The engine happens to give you a lot of assets! All the assets provided fit the engine's size sprite-works perfectly, and they're all mostly vague enough to where you call them different objects/names in your game. (One asset in a game could be called a magic crystal while in another it's a save point, etc...)

Use the tools given to you by the engine! Don't be ashamed for not knowing how to draw. Sprites and artwork in a game are nothing without actual gameplay.

 

[The Stranger]

@PoptartPresident 100% agree! Besides, the default assets aren't ugly by any means, I genuinely like them. Really, the only things in the default assets I'm not a fan of are the sound effects.

 

[ericv00]

Guys, making artwork is really HARD for a LOT of people.

Nothing worth doing is easy.

 

[The Stranger]

Nothing worth doing is easy.

Sometimes it's not worth doing at all. If someone knows they're not capable of creating assets on their own, it's wiser for them, and a better use of their time, to use things readily available (default assets, buying from various asset stores, etc), or to pay someone else to make these things for them.

 

[ericv00]

I get it. The way it is worded just didn't sit well with me. Disagreeing with the advice because doing it is "HARD" is not the best reasoning. The advice is still valid, whether or not one decides to take it.

And it IS hard to create your own assets (well, in the quantity needed for a full game). I spent a full week on just the tiles I need for the walls of ruins, but egad! do they look better than the default ones. And I am positive other people will appreciate the work, too. It's not easy; It may not even be worth it; but it does elevate the project.

 

[GodCiunas]

What are some common advice you see in the RPG Maker communities or game development communities that even if they sound nice, are ones you usually don't agree with and why?

Replacing the entire RTP to me is bad advice. Honestly alot of successful games have very similar graphics, with only minor tweaks. This also makes beginning devs get overwhelmed trying to find or create an entire custom game. Add some flare sure but replace everything? That is alot to do even with a full team.

Finish a game quickly. Honestly big gaming companies spend years before releasing even a demo. with teams of 20 to 30 plus. Rushing usually produces bad grammar, terrible plot line, and rushed maps. Literally saw a few games that just had terrible spelling, a guy get shot with an invisible arrow that left the player laughing at it like a joke and he disintegrated literally way he was supposed to have died

 

[Magenta-Fantasies]

Telling people not to make their dream game. If someone really wants to attempt something, let them. Many here are hobbyists with next to no intentions of becoming full time game devs or getting rich.

Does it really matter if they never finish? Not really. Does it matter if the end result isn't as good as they imagined it would be? Again, not really. However, if they enjoyed the experience then they haven't come away empty handed.

I think encouraging folk to work on things they have no interest in, though it might sound like sage advice, might make them throw in the towel even sooner than they would have if they had just stuck with their dream game. Because who wants to waste weeks or months (most likely of your spare time) doing something you don't care about?

I agree with this, with a caveat.

Currently, I'm working on two games, an "experiment game" and a "dream game." I'm using the "experiment game" to test game mechanics, map design, pacing, etc. so I can see what works and what will not work in my "dream game." While I am not doing any programming for my "dream game" at the moment (and won't until at least 2022), I am creating assets for it like character portraits, tilesets, and logos, as well as writing the script. Unsurprisingly, I find the latter work on the "dream game" much more fulfilling and enjoyable. I don't really care about or have any emotional investment in the "experiment game." I'm creating it purely to test game features, see what people enjoy playing and improve my knowledge of RPG Maker.

Here is the caveat: it may not be that enjoyable, but it's incredibly useful to create an "experiment game." When the time comes, it also will save me a lot of headaches with my "dream game." I will already know how to implement most if not all of the features I want, and I will know that they work so I can plan my assets and script around them.

 

[PoptartPresident]

I get it. The way it is worded just didn't sit well with me. Disagreeing with the advice because doing it is "HARD" is not the best reasoning. The advice is still valid, whether or not one decides to take it.

And it IS hard to create your own assets (well, in the quantity needed for a full game). I spent a full week on just the tiles I need for the walls of ruins, but egad! do they look better than the default ones. And I am positive other people will appreciate the work, too. It's not easy; It may not even be worth it; but it does elevate the project.

Yeah, I certainly could've worded it better. Not the best with that stuff lol

I've seen some people who use photoshop edit assets which is also a perfectly valid way to still use tools given to ya.

 

[ericv00]

I've seen some people who use photoshop edit assets which is also a perfectly valid way to still use tools given to ya.

A fair amount of what I'm doing is editing the existing tiles, I'm just going a bit further than a quick hue adjustment or tweak. I basically draw overtop of the existing tiles until there is almost none of it left. Though there are a few that I only tweaked a little and they seem to work just fine that way. Personally, I'm a stickler for having my work be as original as possible, so I do intend to scrub every remaining bit of the original tilesets before I'm done. ...within reason. But that is just me and what I want out of MY project.

There is a lot of personality you can add to the look of your game by just doing little edits, like drawing in little flowers or fruits on the trees or little additions to the grass. Adding moss to the rocks. Duplicating rocks and adding a few more to the tile. Duplicating leaves and adding more to that tile. And you don't have to commit to the changes. You can just save the edited tileset as a separate file. At the very least, I encourage people to try it out... though I haven't used GIMP in many years, so I don't know how intuitive it is to use anymore. (I wouldn't expect a non-artist to purchase Photoshop or something equivalent. It's a bit excessive for someone who doesn't even know if they will want to use edits they make. I use PaintTool SAI, mostly.)

...sigh. Sometimes I wonder if I should offer my services in some way to teach people, like starting a youtube channel (specifically for generating art assets).

 

[48Tentacles]

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?

That is what the Factorio devs did according with their blog, and they are doing great nowadays. So that is a good starting point for any dev.

The main difference is that we all deal with a common game engine in this forum, that is RPG Maker of X version. Strong similarities on gameplay can be found, and that is one main criticism to this from everyone, but I've seen (and played!) wonders made with this engine.

So go for it.

 

[Arctica]

Most of the advice comes with a context behind it. People who don't agree usually because they come from a different perspective. And people who are giving the advice do not usually give the context why they should do it. Knowing that I don't think I don't have much advice to disagree with.

But for something that I personally do not do is to replace RTP with something else. I know where those people came from but it is too much for me to do it, especially the reason why I choose RPG Maker over other engines was because it comes with a default ready-to-use asset. If I have to replace everything, I might as well just learn other engines.

And one more thing, rather than advice, it is more like a convention. If you see a plugin structure, you see the entire thing is encapsulated by (() => {})(). Two years ago, I made a thread complaining about the practice. The answer I get never satisfied me.

To put it simply for non-tech people, the practice allows you to avoid a potential plugin conflict because someone else uses the same name (which really has an abysmal chance, except you're building a website with a massive JS library). However, the drawback is you can not apply a separate patch to the plugin (to fix or alter the behavior by adding a separate plugin. You have to explicitly edit the said plugin. This is, for me, extremely inconvenient.

I figured it was something like that on my own. One day I thought "ya know, my names are literal and a bit longy, there's no way there would be a conflict. "

Anyhow, I'm also not a fan of the no RTP thing and I also think it borderlines on being a misconception. I downloaded 4 tile assests because they fit my vision, but most of the RTP also fits into my vision. It should be what you vision your RPG world to look like and if RTP doesn't fit, then don't use it, and if it does, then use it.

 

[Ninjakillzu]

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.

Not to mention that you can get 4k texture packs and ENBs for New Vegas. Now you can have best of both worlds; great gameplay and great graphics.

 

[Benny Jackdaw]

"Looks are superficial."

I really hate this kind of advice. "You're not supposed to like a character for how they look. You're SUPPOSED to like a character for what they do or their back story or how powerful they are and blah blah blah." But more often than not, it just comes off as an excuse to not make your character look interesting or cool. I mean, there is no reason you can't give a cool looking character an interesting back story or personality. You could give a cyborg anteater or something crazy and out there a well written story if you wanted. You can have an actually diverse cast of characters each with their own relatable traits. Your characters don't always need to have the same boring template to them.

This doesn't just extend to my usual rants. A lot of times in RPGs, in the rare case you DO get something unique and different, they are almost always the worst character in the game. It's really bad in Monster collectors. I swear, the ultra beasts from Pokemon are meant to be offensive. You have all these weird, ugly stick figure characters that are completely overpowered, but then you have this giant, menacing tank looking monster with a huge mouth, several arms and some legitimate size presence, and he is absolute competitive garbage.

I get it! Looks don't make the character, but are you seriously trying to avoid making your character look good just to live up to some stupid philosophy? And yeah, I also get that looked are subjective, but way too often does media Pander to one specific taste, like how RPGs Pander to an audience that ONLY wants visually human characters (skinny white humans to be exact) and nothing else, so people who want other characters get nothing, or how Pokemon seems to love adding overpowered stick figure after overpowered stick figure to their game while purposely making big menacing designs absolute garbage competitively. And that's not even a problem exclusive to Pokemon, but it seems to be common in Monster collectors in general where the strongest monsters are always really skinny and unimpressive.

And I'm sorry, but I care about looks. A character that looks interesting is one I'm going to be drawn to. It's the one I'm going to have the most fun playing as. Even if it's not the most relatable character, often times I don't mind that, especially when I can relate to so few characters in media. Making a character that does good deeds and has a tragic backstory is easy: getting me to care about a character is not. It's why I find myself relating more to an undead misanthropic rat who goes through an arc where he learns to have more compassion and let go of his grudges than a typical human monster hunter. Character that I like visually as well as a character that has an understandable story is the kind of character that I'm going to like the most, more than a character that I'm only supposed to relate to because they're the same species as me.

And I'm being honest, part of the fun of Designing a character for me is designing their looks. I am writing a book right now, and sometimes I get the feeling that I'm not making my characters diverse enough because the most prominent characters have an anatomical theme. I try to balance that out with characters that don't follow that theme but I often feel like I'm not going far enough. One thing that helps, however, is that all the characters are a different creature, which helps them more easily stand out. I could focus on one particular animal or creature that I like, but I don't find that fun. I generally prefer character casts that have multiple different species among them, and that's a big reason I'm writing a book in the first place is because I want to see more of that and I'm not confident enough in my skills with anything else. I'm barely even confident enough in my writing skills and I am constantly going through periods of self-doubt.

Edit: I already mentioned this before, but this is more in-depth. To be fair, looks are not the only or even biggest reason I like non-human characters so much, but they're one.

 

[Aesica]

Hmm, let's see what doozies I've come across since I started using RM:

• Don't use elements. Elements are a great extra layer of complexity for your battles, but you should be somewhat transparent with them so they feel like part of a meaningful, tactical decision-making process in battles rather than just being a tacked-on guessing game.
• Don't use RTP/default assets. While yeah, high-quality custom graphics or a cuter art style is preferable, RTP is fine too, especially if you aren't an art pro and have a microscopic budget. I'm pretty sure other RM devs care more about whether not a game uses RTP than standard players. A game made with default assets is better than no game made at all due to you burning out just making all the assets, right? It's worth trying to edit them a bit though, even if it's just minor stuff like darker wooden roofs/bookcases, recolored trees/flowers, etc.
• Don't add puzzles. This is really just a veiled opinion rather than advice, but I hear it a lot. Some of us (including me) love puzzles. Why would I want to leave out something I enjoy? Just...maybe don't have the really difficult ones barring main story progression.
• Enemies should be killable in 1-2 rounds. If you're going for a lazily-done battle system chocked full of random encounters or unavoidable regenerating visual encounters, sure. But if the battle system is a main selling feature of your game and the player has more control over battle engagement, it's okay to add a bit more depth to the turn length.
• Enemies should start hard. Well this is actually something I see done moreso than having it offered as advice, but like...no, don't. Let the player get used to things with easier stuff. There's a reason nearly every FF/DQ game has one-shottable goblins and slimes as the first enemies you fight.

 

[KawaiiKid]

"Graphics don't matter if there is good gameplay and story."

While I'd agree with this to an extent, you are losing a HUGE audience if your game doesn't have cohesive graphics. They don't need to be the best in the world, but they all need to fit together. I'm sorry, but not many of us want to play your default tileset, default sound effect, default battle system game. Even if it had a top notch story, if my eyes aren't pleased with what they see, I'm not going to play the game.

 

[bgillisp]

Oddly enough, sales disagree with you. I know a dev that does a lot of default everything and still makes enough in sales to not need another job.