Grinding Alternative: Train with your fellow party members

[SuperMasterSword]

You could make different "enemies" depending on what level or skills that ally had. The higher level they were the tougher they were to beat, or perhaps they stronger they were. Or you could even reflect their characteristics by making so, maybe they wouldn't poison them because they don't want to hurt their ally.

Although that would be a funny scene.

Character 1:Why am I in the hospital?

Character 2:Because you got poisoned while sparring with Character 3.

Character 3:I was just trying to win!

 

[hian]

I don't see why any grind should be necessary at all, whether we're talking enemies, or your own party members.


Ideally, you should balance out, and play-test your game so that the encounter/enemies you do end up fighting should provide you with the experience and levels needed to face bosses and carry you through your game.


Grind, IMO, should only be optional, either for completionist players who enjoy power-housing their way through a game, or for getting the extra levels needed for some sort of additional content (bonus story etc.)


Very rarely, if ever, is it enjoyable to have stop your story progression because you have to grind to be strong enough to face the new set of enemies you're encountering in a new area of the game.


That's the biggest issue I have with the game I'm currently playing (Final Fantasy Type-0).


Completing story missions very rarely affords you more than 1 or 2 levels, and since there are 14 characters, most of your team won't level at all. Yet, whenever a new mission is introduced, it more often than not requires 4-5 additional levels for you to have any chance at succeeding, which means you need to go grind a whole lot in-between every mission (that's not even taking into account the extra missions, that usually require as much as 10 levels more than your average missions).


It's a chore, and ruins the pacing of the game.


At that point, it really wouldn't matter what my alternatives for grinding are, because it's still grind, and it's still a chore.


So again, balance your game properly.


Make it so that if a player fight every encounter thrown their way in a dungeon, they will naturally have the required levels to get through to the next area.

 

[Zoltor]

I don't see why any grind should be necessary at all, whether we're talking enemies, or your own party members.

Ideally, you should balance out, and play-test your game so that the encounter/enemies you do end up fighting should provide you with the experience and levels needed to face bosses and carry you through your game.

Grind, IMO, should only be optional, either for completionist players who enjoy power-housing their way through a game, or for getting the extra levels needed for some sort of additional content (bonus story etc.)

Very rarely, if ever, is it enjoyable to have stop your story progression because you have to grind to be strong enough to face the new set of enemies you're encountering in a new area of the game.

That's the biggest issue I have with the game I'm currently playing (Final Fantasy Type-0).

Completing story missions very rarely affords you more than 1 or 2 levels, and since there are 14 characters, most of your team won't level at all. Yet, whenever a new mission is introduced, it more often than not requires 4-5 additional levels for you to have any chance at succeeding, which means you need to go grind a whole lot in-between every mission (that's not even taking into account the extra missions, that usually require as much as 10 levels more than your average missions).

It's a chore, and ruins the pacing of the game.

At that point, it really wouldn't matter what my alternatives for grinding are, because it's still grind, and it's still a chore.

So again, balance your game properly.

Make it so that if a player fight every encounter thrown their way in a dungeon, they will naturally have the required levels to get through to the next area.

If you're going the flawed route the FF series has gone, why even have enemies/fights at all, just make a VN instead of claiming you're making a RPG. There's a lot more to a RPG then story, like the journey, leveling, and developing the char, which is a "big" aspect, among other things, .

All you need, is to not suck when it comes to game design, It's really that simple. There is no reason why grinding should feel like a drag. Side quests, a great treasure hunting aspect, good map design, that makes you want to explore, ect add a lot of enjoyment to grinding. If Grinding is "only" about gaining levels to beat the next boss, that's the fault of the developer making grinding boring, not the fault of grinding its self.

That is called bad design, I was recently playing a game, which has like 20 char(only 4 char in a party, inwhich only three char can be switched in/out), yet there was no way to power lv, to get char to catch up(and yet not only were char usually underleveled when they joined, but there was no way to power level in the game at all). This Isn't a strike against grinding, this is a strike against bad game design. If there's no way to lv 20 char, yet you're pretty much forcing us to use almost all 20 char, yea that's not good lol.

 

[Harmill]

All you need, is to not suck when it comes to game design, It's really that simple.

Do you have a recipe for "good game design"? Can you share your secrets with the rest of us? 

 

[Zoltor]

Do you have a recipe for "good game design"? Can you share your secrets with the rest of us? 

Well a good starting point, is these three, in this order. Systems, maps, and story Those three are what the gameplay value is comprised of(50%, 35%, and 15% respectfully).

What most people tend to do "really, really" bad with, especially in the RM/indi dev scene in general, is system design.

Oddly enough the indi game dev scene is utterly full with great artists(doesn't add anything to the game at all), and good writers(sadly story Isn't a major gameplay aspect, It's a "supplement" to the gameplay aspect. Mapping Isn't that bad at all, atleast in the RM scene anyway, I would say atleast 30% of the mappers around here make awesome maps.

The systems is the weakest aspect in the indi scene period(including, but not just the RM part of the indi scene). Once in a blue moon, you may find a game like DMO, but you can count all of such games ever made since the indi scene started in the 90s on one hand, and still have fingers left over. It is really that bad.

The sad point is, RPG Maker(especially ACE), makes designing systems a hell of a lot easier, then it typically would be(nevermind the fact It's super fast to edit something on the fly, and retest it), yet even the better RM games, are only ok-good as far as systems go, which is worth playing if you're bored don't get me wrong, but fall into the area of, It's only worth playing once.

Now here's the very sad part, the indi scene that are into making RPGs(which has to be almost 80%) are comprised of people who grew up playing the actual high quality RPGs, so the majority of these people, know what makes a good RPG(or should know anyway), there really Isn't any excuse.

I see indications all the time in the support threads, that people don't even really try to learn how to event most of the time. People tend to stop trying to figure things out, after they know how switches work, as if that was all you need to learn, and even with that, you get a ton of people clearly not trying to learn how switches work.

Basically at the end of the day, you end up with a lot of people playing developer, who could barely even use switches to their fullest, nevermind knowing anything about the mountain of other event commands/capeabilities.

Yea they might toss in a sidveiew battle script or crafting script, but that's it(probally don't even fully implement the crafting feature if they toss such a script in), and people wonder why so many games end up sucking.

Then you seem to have a part of the RM community, be decent with eventing, but not great, so to make up for their short comings, they try to keep the game enjoyable by adding a lot of playable char to the game. This could possibly work, if such developers didn't forget about balancing the game. Again it comes down to systems

The more char a game has, the more effort you need to put towards balancing, and making sure each char actually has a purpose(doesn't end up becoming useless), yet people who go this route, tend to throw balancing, char purpose ect out the window.

Well anyway, not neglecting systems, and mapping is a good start, once those two are taken care of, story can only enhance gameplay. Also unless you have played tons of RPGs in the past, you shouldn't be trying to make one. RPG is a very complex genre, that requires having a ton of xp with the genre(and there's a lot of variants too, since It's such a flexible genre, so you should know about them as well) to really have anyking of understanding about what is possible, and how systems will interact with each other.

 

[hian]

If you're going the flawed route the FF series has gone, why even have enemies/fights at all, just make a VN instead of claiming you're making a RPG. There's a lot more to a RPG then story, like the journey, leveling, and developing the char, which is a "big" aspect, among other things, .

That's just a semantics game and a matter of perspective.


It doesn't matter what you label it as in that given case, what matters is that what you make is enjoyable to some demographic.


Maybe FF is a **** RPG, from your definition of RPGs, but that is irrelevant to the point in this case, which is that FF games have always largely been about telling stories.


In a game largely about telling stories, a game-play element which requires you to pause the story-telling for a prolonged periods of time, is problematic, unless of course that game-play mechanic is enjoyable enough to make you forget about it - that's very rarely, if ever, the case in RPGs because every single mechanic is an abstraction for what should actually be going on, and that is bound to take it's toll on most players.


Imagine if you will, a game where you play a match of chess in between each story progression point. Well, that's fine if you love chess. It's chore if you hate chess, or if you're the kinda person who might grow to hate chess if you have to play it all the god damn time in between the stuff you actually care about.


You also ignore the fact that it is possible to tell stories with game-play to begin with. From that perspective, and RPG like FF completely opting out narrative for the sake of repetitive level grinding is ridiculous.

All you need, is to not suck when it comes to game design, It's really that simple. There is no reason why grinding should feel like a drag. Side quests, a great treasure hunting aspect, good map design, that makes you want to explore, ect add a lot of enjoyment to grinding. If Grinding is "only" about gaining levels to beat the next boss, that's the fault of the developer making grinding boring, not the fault of grinding its self.

That's your perspective. It has nothing to do with facts or objectivity. It has to do with what you consider the focus elements of gaming, and how you deal with repetitive game-play.


Grind, the way I see it, is needless repetition of game-play. That's literally how I define the term. There is no redeeming quality to that. You can't "design it away" with "good game design", because grind in my opinion is bad game design by default


That being said, you don't call the battles in Devil May Cry grind, despite the fact that the essentially build around the same mechanics over and over again - because the core element of the game is the combat mechanics, and you literally play the game for the combat. Besides, the game is never going to hold you back artificially for some arbitrary game-play abstraction like "levels". It's, generally speaking, based on skills through and through.


I play RPGs, however, for the narrative. I don't play them for the combat, I don't play them to explore, and I don't play them to hoard items. Non of those activities are fun to me, unless they serve a function to the narrative. That's why I don't play MMORPGs/Monster Hunter(and MH clones)/dungeon runners on principle - because they stand for everything I hate in game-play design - that is to say loads of exploring, grinding, and item hoarding that provide little to no incentive except to fuel other game-play elements that are generally boring to me in either case, because they're always abstractions for activities that other game genres usually do better (like action games), or some worthless sense of achievement that has no impact in the real world.


The thing you don't seem to realize, is that to a lot of people needless repetition is boring by default.


That means grind is inherently boring because grind is "needless repetitive activities".  


The moment an activity is broken down into diverse components, you're no longer grinding, you're engaging in progressive game-play which is the exact opposite.

That is called bad design, I was recently playing a game, which has like 20 char(only 4 char in a party, inwhich only three char can be switched in/out), yet there was no way to power lv, to get char to catch up(and yet not only were char usually underleveled when they joined, but there was no way to power level in the game at all). This Isn't a strike against grinding, this is a strike against bad game design. If there's no way to lv 20 char, yet you're pretty much forcing us to use almost all 20 char, yea that's not good lol.

Sure, that is bad design. It's bad because it makes grind even more contrived than it has to be. That doesn't change the fact that even optimally designed grind, is still grind, and to a lot of people, that means that it will be boring because people are not usually attracted to repetitive game-play when it carries on for too long I.E the less grind a game has at all, the better a lot of people will generally receive it.


I'm not there aren't people out there who enjoy certain types and levels of grind - I am saying I, and many other don't, and if you want to spare people the feeling of tediousness coming from grind, don't make alternative ways of grinding, balance your game instead, and remove grind altogether for general progression.

Well a good starting point, is these three, in this order. Systems, maps, and story Those three are what the gameplay value is comprised of(50%, 35%, and 15% respectfully).

In your opinion.

Oddly enough the indi game dev scene is utterly full with great artists(doesn't add anything to the game at all), and good writers(sadly story Isn't a major gameplay aspect, It's a "supplement" to the gameplay aspect. Mapping Isn't that bad at all, atleast in the RM scene anyway, I would say atleast 30% of the mappers around here make awesome maps.

Again, depends on what you play games for.


Personally I hate the term "game" as it's insanely regressive, and in no way gives a wholesome impression of what the medium is capable of atm (usually also why most people refuse to acknowledge the medium as art).


Interactive multi-media is a better name when you consider what devs can do, and are doing at this present day and age.


Personally, I don't see games like Heavy Rain, and Super-Mario as being on the same page at all, and therefore non-comparable, but they're still both "games"(since that's the only word we have to operate with atm) and provide two different experiences that are both excellent in each their respective and unique ways catering to two very different demographics.


It's perfectly fine to tailor game-play around narrative, and it's perfectly fine to make a game primarily as artistry, that is to say to provide an interactive "gamey" experience of visual, audio and narrative driven art.


There are certainly tons of people who enjoy it, so it really boils down to personal vision, and who your demographic is, not some narrow-minded retrograde vision of what "games" supposedly are based on the fact that they're called "games".


Don't take this all to mean that I reject any and all standards for game development, or that I think games like Heavy Rain should be what everyone should aspire to make. I'm simply saying that there is room for more expansive views on design these days, and there really is no room for simplistic judgements of design granted that one doesn't know what the vision of the dev is, and who he/she is targeting with the game in question.

 

[whitesphere]

The most important thing at the end of the day is the game is fun to play.   There are just so many factors which are so subjective, there's no one answer, just like there's no one type of RPG --- there are tactical RPGs, combat-centric RPGs (Diablo comes to mind), Roguelikes, story-centric RPGs and open world exploration RPGs, to name a few.

Now I agree that game balance is crucial.  But, even the meaning of "superb game balance" varies drastically.  Chrono Trigger really doesn't need any grinding, while the Dragon Quest series lives on it.  But both are well balanced for their goals.  Dragon Quest focuses on "You feel like you've achieved something if you've really had to grind your party up to strength."  That is the typical JRPG style, as well.

So becoming strong enough to beat a boss will require a lot more grinding in Dragon Quest games.  But, if you like that style, the grind is totally OK for you.

Now, if a game's battle system is well used, it makes every combat, whether it's a random fight or a boss fight, entertaining.  Games which are grinding-heavy really need to make sure battles are fun to play, but less grind heavy games still benefit.

If a story-centric RPG doesn't have an engaging story, or the story isn't told well through map design, dialog, etc, the game falls apart.  Interestingly, you can easily be a great writer and still be a poor RPG storyteller since they tell their stories in completely different ways. 

So, to get back on topic, grinding, whether against party members or against monsters, isn't always a bad thing.  However, the RPG needs to be enjoyable.  So, if the player-vs-player grinding is fun, no matter how often it's done, then it's a good thing to add to grinding heavy RPGs.  But if the game isn't supposed to be grind-heavy, it's completely redundant to add player-vs-player grinding, since the goal there is to minimize grinding anyways.

 

[Zoltor]

Any time a game is designed around "just" telling a story, is a situation where that game shouldn't have came into existence to beginwith. A game implies that, it needs to have a person playing it. If there's no systems to speak of, and maps are just to get from point A to point B/to progress the story(why even have maps sigh), it shouldn't have been called a RPG or even a game in general.

No It's fact. If the story is the reason for liking the genre, and really is the only thing a person cares about. The fact is they shouldn't be playing RPGs(or making them for that matter), watch a movie, one of the tons of story driving live action series, anime or here's a idea, you can read a book.

Story should be treated as a added bonus to RPGs, nothing more. A RPG can still be great without much story or even having a bad story, the same can't be said if the systems/maps suck..  

No you're just trying to justify bad gameplay design,  I feel like you're offering a challenge, you make a game that's pretty much nothing but story, with really basic systems/bleh maps, ect(no scripting at all allowed, and no complex events). I'll make a game with awesome systems, and good mapping, with a very toned down/basic story(I'm actually a writer myself, so It's a shame, but if you need proof to understand reality, I don't see another option). Then we'll see what people like "playing" more

You're missing the point, RPGs should have grinding, otherwise don't have standard enemies at all, and have the boss battles fully scripted(aka scripted as in story/evented actions). Also while you're at it, remove levels, stats, and equips since they are no longer needed... Where's the RPG, I don't see it, I see an Adventure game at most(that's if you even still find items to progress the game), you don't have a RPG if you take the need to gain levels away..

Grinding definitely should be fun, if it Isn't, that's just bad execution/lack of supporting systems or features.

Now I absolutely loath the "Games are Art" movement, because people who follow that line of thought, treat it literally as such(as in traditional forms of art, pictures,  writing, and music). If by any means, "games"(you know something that must be played) should be considered art, It's how multiple systems are put together to work in harmony with one another, that's the art of a game.

If you want to draw, paint, exc art, there's museums, DA, Elfwood or art books, that are designed to show such off. Writers have books, Elfwood(to a lesser extent DA, I wish DA supported writers more then they do), novels, playwrights, and forums. Music is a little more limited, but there's music sharing sites, forums, scorebooks, and CDs(possibly more options, but that depends where you live more then anything else).

It's fairly viable to treat games as a canvas for music, due to the music industry being far more limiting, infact, if you're in the US, It's vertually dead outside of the few cities known for music(however music is only a supplement to everything else in the game, it definitely doesn't stand on its own).

As for Art, and Writing, out of all the things to use as a canvas, a game is  byfar the least efficient way to show off such.

 

[whitesphere]

Actually, I think we agree on the vast majority of our points, Zoltor, but not the phrasing.

Good maps, complex events, good music and, yes, doing combat and gaining abilities are key components of a good story-centric RPG.  I think a great RPG is one where you feel you've experienced the story, from gaining strength as you level up, to seeing a beautiful mapped waterfall, to the dusty hovel, with great music and clever events to set the atmosphere and add layers to the story.

And I agree that, even in story-centric RPGs, it is a great asset to have a fun combat system, and definitely adds to the feel of the game. If combat is poorly implemented or poorly balanced, it ruins the story by taking away the player's suspension of disbelief and replacing it with frustration.

Also, obviously there is some measure of "need to gain XP and Gold to get equipment and strength to survive" required for the story.   It also justifies the narrative --- otherwise how would 4 kids, no matter how special their backgrounds, be able to take down a world crushing power in combat? 

I think it is completely subjective how long the player needs to spend gaining that strength, rather than, say, balancing the game so the amount of XP and gold gained, from random combat, while doing the story, is nearly sufficient to win the game.

 

[Zoltor]

Oh ok. Yea how many battles or gold/xp is needed(how much grinding there could be, before it turns into a negative), changes based on the specific game's systems, so even if you wrote out an exact formula, it would still be different in each game.

 

[Perversewolf]

 Obviously, in order to keep this from getting stale and pointless, the "enemy" party member would get stronger as level ups happen normally, and he/she would have all the skill sets and stuff that the party member would normally have. If the player loses a training session, of course there wouldn't be a game over, just a return to the map.

Also, while in training, all equipment gets unequipped, and a modifier is put on the "enemy", reducing their attack by a certain amount.

Feedback? Suggestions? fire away, all that good stuff.

 how about every 5/10 levels instead of fighting a PC You Fight A previous boss at/above your characters level with some slightly stronger move's or maybe every 10/15 you add another pc as a sparring partner?

 

[Zoltor]

If you're gonna have training in a non-Tactic/RPG, don't have PCs training against PCs, because that's just a very dumb/counter productive idea altogether, and is very pointless. Make a training Arena, where you can select what monsters/level monsters to fight(probally even monsters that the player can't run into as of yet),, It's much more efficient then coming up with any stupid xp bonus system you could possibly come up with, for a PC vs PC training system.

 

[Shelby]

Sounds nice on paper but if you are wanting a realistic experience it would be a fail. I will assume your party is well rounded with ranged and close combat types? So how is a archer going to train with a heavy assault troop?

Answer they are not. the archer would have to be a fool to be anywhere near the other troop let alone the same elevation, otherwise the assault troop would just walk up and kill the archer. And what is the assault troop going to do if the archer is faw away on a hill? Is he really going to try and charge the hill while getting fired upon? There is no experience to be gained from that, if anything you should take away xp.

Why not have them read tactics manuals? You can learn a lot from reading!  

 

[hian]

Any time a game is designed around "just" telling a story, is a situation where that game shouldn't have came into existence to beginwith. A game implies that, it needs to have a person playing it. If there's no systems to speak of, and maps are just to get from point A to point B/to progress the story(why even have maps sigh), it shouldn't have been called a RPG or even a game in general.

Ought-is fallacy. You aren't (nor are anyone else for that matter) at liberty to say how anything "should" operate.


They operate they way they do, and that's that. Todays games have stories. If you're going to use some facile retrograde definition of "games", you might as well say that games shouldn't have any story to them at all, since the first games didn't.


Point in case though, is that I already made the argument that I don't like the term "game". It no longer truly fits what sort of media we can produce with computers anymore, and I therefore reject the idea that any product that incorporates aspects of the digital interactive medium should be limited to design-philosophy that is stuck in the late 80's.

No It's fact. If the story is the reason for liking the genre, and really is the only thing a person cares about. The fact is they shouldn't be playing RPGs(or making them for that matter), watch a movie, one of the tons of story driving live action series, anime or here's a idea, you can read a book.

Again, ought-is fallacy. Take a hike.


Do you really fail to see the difference between an interactive narrative presented with both visuals and sound, to book or a movie?


I am interested in advanced ways of telling stories that allows the person being told to take an active role in the ways the story unfolds. That sort of design philosophy, and interest driving development, is neither marginal nor strange. It is common both among AAA developers, and players alike.


With that being the case, your point and your opinions are moot. You are trying to enforce a standard of game-design that doesn't reflect the times, nor necessarily even a large part of the market.

Story should be treated as a added bonus to RPGs, nothing more. A RPG can still be great without much story or even having a bad story, the same can't be said if the systems/maps suck..

I disagree. I'm not going to play an RPG if it has a **** story seeing as you'll be spending a very large portion of the game listening to/reading NPC dialogue, and neither are very many other people.


This is especially so seeing as all game-play mechanics are usually abstractions. Players accept these abstractions because they build towards something, and that something, I would suggest, for the vast majority of RPG players, is story-progression.


Of course, nobody is going to play a game that has ****ty game-play either, but that's irrelevant to this argument. You're setting up a false dichotomy because you're too invested into your own dogmatic view of what games "should be".


It's not either "it has story emphasis and poor game-play", or "it has hardly any story emphasis and good game-play". If a game has ****ty game-play or ****ty story, people aren't going to play it.


With that being said, I would say that if you're setting out to make an RPG, and you don't put an emphasis on story-telling, then not very many people will play it.


The only "RPGs" that usually do that successfully, are dungeon runners/action RPGs (like Diablo and Dark Souls), and they get away with it because the game-play is atypical of RPGs in general.


Good luck making a game with a JRPG set-up (which is usually what you do with RPG-makers) and glossing over story in favor of "game-play" that revolves largely around abstractions.

No you're just trying to justify bad gameplay design,  I feel like you're offering a challenge, you make a game that's pretty much nothing but story, with really basic systems/bleh maps, ect(no scripting at all allowed, and no complex events). I'll make a game with awesome systems, and good mapping, with a very toned down/basic story(I'm actually a writer myself, so It's a shame, but if you need proof to understand reality, I don't see another option). Then we'll see what people like "playing" more

You're projecting and straw-manning my position, and making a false dichotomy that I have never encouraged or said I believe in. Again, look at my response above this one.


I'll have to take your claim with a grain of salt though, because I've yet to come across a good writer that has no idea how to formulate arguments without committing large amounts of logical fallacies (and yes, you would be one such person).


In either case, why would you need this experiment to demonstrate anything? All you have to do is point to games like MGS4, FF13, Heavy Rain, Wrath of Asura etc etc, to demonstrate that not only is there a market for games with a large focus on the narrative, they can often be very successful.


Take off your blindfold already and face reality.

You're missing the point, RPGs should have grinding, otherwise don't have standard enemies at all, and have the boss battles fully scripted(aka scripted as in story/evented actions). Also while you're at it, remove levels, stats, and equips since they are no longer needed... Where's the RPG, I don't see it, I see an Adventure game at most(that's if you even still find items to progress the game), you don't have a RPG if you take the need to gain levels away..

Seriously? Are you that naive, or just trying really hard to misconstrue my argument? I clearly said in my first post that grind can exist in a game, but it should be there as an additional task, for additional content, not as standard needing to be met in order to clear the main narrative.


What I said is that optimal game-balance, is where the needed amount of battles needed to level your characters to face the next challenge, should be provided through your regular game-play - that is to say, if I fight all the encounters thrown at me in a dungeon, all the way to the end, I shouldn't have to backtrack and run in circles for a while because I'm still to weak to beat the boss.


This does not somehow remove the need for items, stats, or levels, since you'll still have people who won't fight all the encounters thrown at them (some will run away, or take short-cuts), some are worse players than others and will need extra levels or equipment to make up for their lack of strategical skills, and if the developer has added additional challenges or story-content, some people will grind for that too.


I am saying that it is poor game-design to make a game such that the average player must grind to get past game-sections that are inherent to the clearing of the game. It's bad design, because it doesn't add anything in terms of actual difficulty, nor does it provide good incentive for grinding, it simply tells you that "here, go repeat this for an arbitrary amount of time, because we didn't bother to balance out the bosses/enemies, and we decide how long we think you should play for before you get to progress"

Grinding definitely should be fun, if it Isn't, that's just bad execution/lack of supporting systems or features.

It shouldn't be anything. It is what it is, and what it is, depends on the person doing the work.


I think unnecessary repetition is boring. It doesn't matter what the activity is - it's the fact that I perceive it to be unnecessary that makes it ****.


If I am already acquainted with the games game-play system, and the only reason I can't progress is because I am 5 levels short of having the necessary attack power/whatever to beat the boss, and the only way to remedy that is by going back, or staying in place doing what I've already done the entire point up until that moment, some more, then that is not good game-design - and it will never be good game-design, unless you're making a game for the kind of demographic that thinks World of Warcraft and its likes are good games (never mind that most of those people will never bother with an RPG-maker games anyway).

Now I absolutely loath the "Games are Art" movement, because people who follow that line of thought, treat it literally as such(as in traditional forms of art, pictures,  writing, and music). If by any means, "games"(you know something that must be played) should be considered art, It's how multiple systems are put together to work in harmony with one another, that's the art of a game.

Completely agree with this. I never said game-play itself should be viewed artistically. However, because games, in the totality of their nature, being both visual, comprise of audio, and in having narrative, are art, it is no wonder that people will play them and enjoy them for more than just the act of pushing buttons. And, because game-developers (AAA ones at that) steadily do more and more to provide more wholesome experiences, it is facile, childish, ignorant, and completely god damn stupid in the extreme, to act as if it's somehow set in stone how one ought to design games by using retrograde standards for design that haven't changed since the late 80's.

If you want to draw, paint, exc art, there's museums, DA, Elfwood or art books, that are designed to show such off. Writers have books, Elfwood(to a lesser extent DA, I wish DA supported writers more then they do), novels, playwrights, and forums. Music is a little more limited, but there's music sharing sites, forums, scorebooks, and CDs(possibly more options, but that depends where you live more then anything else).


It's fairly viable to treat games as a canvas for music, due to the music industry being far more limiting, infact, if you're in the US, It's vertually dead outside of the few cities known for music(however music is only a supplement to everything else in the game, it definitely doesn't stand on its own).


As for Art, and Writing, out of all the things to use as a canvas, a game is  byfar the least efficient way to show off such.

No, it's by far the best canvas for artistic expression. Why? Because it's the only canvas that allows you to use all the elements of all other kinds of artistry all at the same time.


If you don't think that's the case, granted what I just said, I have no idea by what standard you judge what is the most optimal way of wholesome artistic expression. In fact, I don't think you do either.


At the end of the day, as a gamer, as a person actual expertize in both digital visual design, and digital audio production, and as a person who is a creative writer (and who's worked with RPG-maker since the late 90's), I prefer expressing my visions with the interactive digital medium, because it's the only medium that allows me to use all the elements of artistry at once.


I suspect the same is true for many producers and devs (and I know it is true for people like Kojima Hideo, and Sakaguchi Hironobu, both of whom I've had conversations with on this very topic).


I don't really know what you're even trying to demonstrate at this point, or what you're working towards. It seems to me that you're just another petty individual of the "old-school gamer"-elitist mindset, who're trying to tell people how to make their games, not out of concern for their product, but because you don't like the way gaming is going.


If you truly were thinking about quality and product viability, you'd be able to consider the large diversity in current gamer demographics, and reflect around what a lot of current popular games actually play like, rather than telling people inane standards for design that you pull out of your ass, based more or less only on a completely self-centered, and out-of-date view on what games "should be like".


The fact of the matter is that, everyone here are making games on the RPG-maker platform. As a rule of thumb, you'd probably want to avoid grind like the plague.


Since you seem to like the idea of experiment -


How about you release your next game with two different balance approaches -


One where players are provided enough EXP through regular game-play to beat the game reasonably, and the other where you need to grind a bit (say 20-30 minutes) before any boss encounter.


See how well that fares, and which version becomes more popular.


I posit the claim that, if you have two games with the exact same game-play, the one where grind is necessary for progression will be the less popular in general.


Think about that for a moment, and what it would mean if that were true on a general basis.

 

[bgillisp]

The most important thing at the end of the day is the game is fun to play.   There are just so many factors which are so subjective, there's no one answer

This. It all depends on the game and how it is implemented. I'll admit I like to sometimes play the Disgaea games, which are nothing but one big grindfest. However, I hated grinding in Bravely Default as it felt like the whole game was get to the crystal...oops you are too weak to take on the boss, go grind for 10 - 15 hours now (and I wish that number was false, but I did grind for two whole days to be able to defeat one boss).

I think though the biggest takeaway from all of this is no matter what system you implement, someone's going to hate it.

 

[amerk]

Some good points, Hian. While it's easy for me to say a good rpg balances both game play with story, even I know where my heart lies the most (with the story). Also, when I refer to an rpg, I'm speaking primarily of the traditional types (excluding visual novels and rogue/dungeon crawlers).

This doesn't mean that I'll play a game that is broken and unplayable (either by mechanics, glitches, or overall balance) even if it has a decent story; just that I don't put as much stock into the game play as I do story. As long as the game works, if the story is good I'll play it. If it's boring, probably not.

Having a game that incorporates both good game play and story is icing on the cake.

 

[Simon D. Aelsi]

This idea sounds brilliant! Would this be a script (Or a series of them...)? If you managed to pull this off would you be willing to share your secret(s)?

(Remember, guys. Not everyone's gonna love everything, ok? )

 

[Silent Darkness]

This idea sounds brilliant! Would this be a script (Or a series of them...)? If you managed to pull this off would you be willing to share your secret(s)?

(Remember, guys. Not everyone's gonna love everything, ok? )

This would be a series of scripts, along with the map.

Also, the idea is that the losing player doesn't die/get downed, just ends up really really tired. Which means health goes down 1 HP. No downed status or anything like that.

 

[Engr. Adiktuzmiko]

To me, you just changed the grinding method... You simply swapped the enemies for your own party members. So in the end, it would still be grinding, technically.


As a player, unless this will earn you items/gold (or enemies don't drop gold/items) I don't see it as a viable alternative.

 

[RaXioN]

[SIZE=medium]I believe grinding will not every go away, weather it is fights on monster island or side quest. Any system you have of gain will also have a grind part to it. But you can mix it up. Maybe have a level bar that controls how much xp you get from do thing such as fighting or quest. The more you do repeated activities the bar decreases. So fighting on monster island for an hour, you will gradually gain less and less xp. But if you grind for ten minutes or so then do a quest, the quest would fill up your bar more. You could also make finding chests or check points in the quest refill your xp bar, so a long quest wouldn’t hurt the xp you gain. Is this grinding? Yes, but it is less repetitive. If you did without levels and made it where your gear determines how strong you are, it would be more like an old Silent Hill or Resident Evil game. This would be ok if you are going for a more linear game. If I don’t stop here I could ramble on for days, this is one of my favorite game topics.[/SIZE]

[SIZE=medium]EDIT: When Inuyasha was trying to learn the windscare, he practiced it on Kirara. Kirara got jaded and ran away. So you could have it where the character can spare for certain abilitys to level up or gain. And the other character may only be able to take so much until they start loosing attributes, but if done correctly they could gain in areas such as deffence. Exp. you want to learn fire 2, so you practice fire 1 on one of your party members. if done too much then they may become more exceptable to fire damage, but done right may gain deffence against fire.[/SIZE]