"WTF is it with the RPG Maker community."
My personal guess? It's full of people whose egos are bigger than their accomplishments, and they refuse to accept that. No, this isn't a dig at you. This is a dig at the community, myself included, and not any individual.
"It's not a Rogue-like, and "This Isn't the only city in the game, It's a special city" Why can't people grasp the concept of a special map/city that "Isn't always" availabe?"
I don't know why you said this. I was saying that it appears your approach to game design is much closer to that of roguelikes than of RPGs. Note: I lurk a lot. I've read multi page arguments between you and other people in other places.
To be clear: yes, I understand that it is a city that you cannot go to whenever you want. I understood that before. I understand that now.
Your hostility does not endear me to my attempt at helping you.
"Between that and omg I can't save everywhere I want, so It's the end of the world(and don't give me that I have a life crap either, most people haves lives, but only people in the RPG maker community whines over not being able to save everywhere)., I doubt many people in the RPG community are willing to play hardly any RPGs at all."
Ha! You know that people complain about every single game without at-will saving like that, no? Competitive online games (shooters, mobas, etc.) don't complain because it's intrinsically part of the game - you can't just leave a match with other people for 3 hours and then pick it up exactly where you left off. Every other game, though? Roguelikes, survival horror, single player games of every variety and type, puzzle games, strategy games, 4xs, action games, you name it: "let us play it when we want to play it and if you don't we WILL hate it." Sometimes it's necessary for a specific ludic experience, but the games that need it as opposed to have it due to tradition or technical limitations can probably be counted on your fingers.
P.S. Insulting people who care enough to say words to you does not make you seem like you know what you're talking about. It makes you seem insecure and short tempered.
P.P.S. Disagreement is the foundation of western society. If you can't handle opposing opinions in a dignified and celebral manner, you are rejecting the entire way our social structure works.
Management of resources is a important aspect of any type of RPG(It's part of journeying, if you don't need to be careful, news flash, the balance of your game sucks(It's way too easy).
I disagree with this. Management of resources is an important aspect of an RPG
if and only if it's balanced around the management of resources as a key gameplay mechanic. Game systems are incredibly flexible and you can make a game where in you need to carefully manage every rat whisker and copper piece, or you can make a game where every single fight is balanced around the idea of a "all stops pulled" battle and there are no resources to manage outside of an individual battle.
There is
nothing inherently better about either way. You just prefer the former. There's nothing wrong with that, but do not say that all other systems are bad and wrong.
The reason I brought up roguelikes is because it's a genre that is slavishly devoted to the former approach rather than the latter. Or, in other words, what you are espousing.
"If such a argument started on another forum(a non-RPG Maker Community heavy forum), yea sure, but on this forum(a forum where people flip out if you don't allow them to save everywhere), I doubt it."
Whoooof. Go check out some game design forums some time. Game designers like to enable players, not disable players, and there's a very simple reason for it:
If you say "yes" to a player, they feel like they are being clever. If you say "no" you are limiting their ability to explore the system. Guess what? You, as the developer, happen to hold all the power when it comes to these decisions. You can tell them "no" to anything you want, but it doesn't mean your game is good OR 'difficult.' You can even tell them "no, you can't lose here." The only "yes / no" decision a player can make in this sense is "do I want to play the game or not?" The more you say yes, the more likely they will say yes.
No, this is not advocating hand holding or games that play themselves. It's advocating a system that players can actually utilize. Divekick is my favourite fighting game from a design perspective because the gameplay has been absolutely distilled to timing and spacing. Combos and juggling and all that (things I was never personally good at) are gone, and timing and spacing (what I am good at) are literally the entire game. This doesn't mean the game is easy. It means the depth comes from the actual gameplay mechanics, instead of an unnecessary devotion cliff.
As an aside, people dislike not being able to save anywhere because there is almost never a good reason for it. There was a good reason for not being able to save anywhere in the Infinity Engine games, by the way! That reason was "because you are in combat, there is a chance, big or small depends on the player, that you will save the game right before you are killed and you no longer have a back up." This is a case of handholding, because it is the developers specifically disallowing the ability to ruin your own save game.
Yet I've never, ever, ever met anybody who criticized that gameplay decision. You might be the first? If so, well, I wouldn't be proud of that. Not all handholding is bad; remember that. Handholding is bad if it detracts from the player's ability to enjoy the game system.
"People here want to be hand fed everything, and if they don't have unlimited access to "every" feature in the game, they form a angry mob."
People form angry mobs whenever someone tells them they are wrong for enjoying themselves.
You are literally being the "stop having fun guys" guy on this topic.
"It makes you wonder if the people here care more about being handfed, then quality game design."
Try listening to them instead of insisting they are bad at liking things.
"If those are the "gold" standard of game design, then It's a sad day for RPGs in general."
Whoah whoah whoahhh. You want to know why the IE games are the gold standard? I don't have the patience to explain all of it to someone who is obviously in love with a specific idealized variant of RPGs, but let me distil a few things down for you:
1) RTWP lets control be as granular as the user wants. If you need to pause every 0.3 seconds to adjust tactics and issue new orders, you can. If you don't need to pause because the fight is trivial, you aren't bogged down with endless menus. If you don't have the game mastery in place to make use of a new command given every 0.3 seconds, you're not forced to bear through it (a common problem with 4X games).
2) The writing was spectacular and phenomenal. You praised Final Fantasy 8 at other points, and all I can think whenever I'm re-exposed to that narrative is "oh, right, that annoying teenage love story." So many obnoxious tropes were completely deconstructed in PS:T that people don't even talk about specific instances. The most sympathetic character in the game is undead. The most challenging and difficult monster in the game is a rat. So on and so forth. These are tropes that still plague RPGs today
and it's been 15 years since that game came out.
3) The game allowed many different approaches to gameplay. If you're not particularly good you might be sleeping for 8 hours after every other hobgoblin. You'll go and solve everybody's problems because you need the EXP in order to defeat the challenges the story lays before you. If you are good, you get to whisk through a small army on two hundred millilitres of healing potion and a scroll of stinking cloud. You skip the excessive sidequests available because you chased what you found interesting, and thus were challenged by your own lack of resources to bring to bear to the fight (but you still prevailed because you handle what you do have masterfully).
When it comes to narrative-driven games, of which RPGs are the torchbearer,
it is not the designer's job to gate content. It's to design a game that is both fun to play and maintains narrative cohesion. Destroying that by setting the player back an hour does not make for a good RPG.
"There's a reason why the item in question Isn't expendable, because then access to it would be way too limited, for something that is suppose to act as a Side Quest hub(not every side quest is picked up/done there, but a lot are), that's why sticking a timer on it works so well. This way It's not based on luck, people can access it throughout the game on a reg basis(well if they do the side quest to get the stone in the first place, however It's not gonna be a hard side quest to find/do)."
Timers are great for things that you don't want used in rapid succession but do want used on a regular basis. It sounds like that's what you want this city to be, so yeah, okay. I can see why you'd want the timer and why it aspires to your design goals. I was suggesting it mostly because, again, it sounds like you want a game that is heavily focused on resource management. It seemed like a good opportunity to put in MORE resource management.
"Also I want people to want to farm enemies for legitimate treasure hunting purposes, but making such a item like that drop, would be more along the lines of "forcing" to player to farm for a specific super rare constantly, which would not be a fun activity for the player(it would be = to FF 8 forcing players to draw magic from enemies, and we all know how much that system is hated. It's a awesome game, but that one system keeps it from being a Great)."
Eh, not particularly. If a player is expected to defeat, say, 120 monsters per hour (high number but bear with me), you just set it to maybe 75 or 80 kills per drop. They will probably not need to use it every hour, meaning that when they are going along fine they develop a small stockpile (3, 4, 6 of them). They're not 'farming' for the thing, they are just naturally building up the resource. Then, eventually they want to use it and they will do so in such instances faster than they develop the stockpile. They note that they are running low, and begin weaning themselves off of it. From the sounds of it, yeah, the timer works better for your idea, but the above would still work wonderfully in many games that are balanced around long-term resource management.
"That depends, do you consider the newer FF games good? If you do, I doubt you would know a good RPG when you see it."
Nope. I don't even consider the 'middle' FF games good. (I never played 1 - 6, to be clear.)
7 was deeply flawed, 8 was a trainwreck, 9 was okay but nothing revolutionary, 10 I never had interest in, 11 I never had interest in, 12 I borrowed from a buddy and I had so many better things to do with my life that I barely got into it, 13 I saw a friend get it when it was new and he hated the game for many reasons and all I could think was "I'm not surprised this is happening, but I am surprised you're surprised." I'm done with Final Fantasies for a long time.
I like how you ducked the question there. I will ask you again, and in no uncertain terms: what are games you consider good? Despite my stand-offish demeanor, I really am trying to help you here. If you cannot or will not answer the question of "what games do you consider good" I will take it to mean that you don't actually like games, and don't know what you're doing.
"No, people are just against good game design in this thread, they want the games to basically play themselves, and god forbid they should die, and thus be sent back to their last save. Also people don't seem to beable to grasp, this is a "special" city, It's not meant to be treated as a traveling shop or whatnot, and is sure as hell Isn't the only city in the game."
No no no no no no. No. No no no. No, no no no, no. No.
Games you don't like != badly designed. Call of Duty is so far removed from my interest that I will never enjoy anything about it, but I watched my roommate play one a few months ago and I noticed hundreds of little details that impressed me for how well it was designed. I will compliment its game design
while simultaneously hating everything about its game design.
]That wasn't the problem, the problem is the gamer, since as we all know, if It's possible to abuse a mechanic, most of them will, so it Isn't so much about reg towns not being important enough, It's about the player asing a utility, just because It's easier/faster to do so.
This is what a game IS. A bunch of game mechanics that the player manipulates, exploits, or abuses. If you try to remove that layer of the game, you are left with a game of checkers where there are no kings and you cannot double-check. It is a long slog of attrition with the turn order determining the winner in most cases, and only BAD mistakes changing that.
And nobody wants to play that.
