Level caps per chapter

[Tai_MT]

IDK, but to me they really feel slow...

Maybe larger maps and excess dialogue?

 

[Engr. Adiktuzmiko]

not that, the battle itself... or maybe it's just the games that I tried...

the time taken by 1 battle to finish (from encounter start up to your return to map) at the parts where you normally start to grind seems a bit long... which makes grinding more tedious than normal... so to me there's really no point in discouraging grinding even more by implementing things like level cap...

 

[Milennin]

You sure it's not because most battle systems in RM games tend to be "afterthoughts" instead of "key features"?  At least, that's been my experience with them.

That's my experience as well. A lot of people tend to stick to the RTP defaults for their monsters and skills.

 

[Tai_MT]

That's my experience as well. A lot of people tend to stick to the RTP defaults for their monsters and skills.

Eh... I don't really like the defaults.  They tend to force me into balancing my characters around them, instead of balancing the monsters around my characters.  Granted, I use strictly the RTP (all my money is tied up and will be for a long time, and I suck as an artist), so I don't have a choice with the sprites.  But, that doesn't mean I can't create my own monsters and skills.  That's half the fun!

A player, on average, in an RPG, will be spending something like 70% of their time in combat.  The other time is split between menus, cutscenes, and map travel.  If your combat is an "after-thought", then you're doing it wrong.  There are RPGs without combat, but the decision needs to be made early on about whether or not you want combat in your game.  If you decide you do, you need to find ways to make it interesting and challenging instead of just a "means to an end".

My experience with most RM created games is that of almost complete neglect for the battle system at all.  That's not to say that these RM games were "bad", it's just that they didn't take combat seriously at all and spent most of their effort on everything else.  That tends to make that 70% of the game somewhat monotonous and boring, despite a great story or fun mechanics.  It's always sad that there are all these problems people post about, or these debates people try to start about preferences and such, and what it really boils down to is "how is the battle system?".  There was an argument a while back about "touch battles" or "random battle" as a pro/con debate.  I couldn't believe such a thing would even exist, since clearly the problem wasn't whether one of these systems was better or worse.  All the arguments tended to boil down to how easy it was to avoid combat in either of the systems.  The real problem was clearly that the battle systems the players had experienced in these types of encounters were boring, uninspired, and bland.  If combat is boring and grindtastic, you completely destroy any reason a player might enjoy combat in your game.  You turn a walk through a dungeon into a grindfest instead of making it a harrowing, nerve-wracking, and accomplished ordeal.

So many issues with an RPG come down to "the combat system is boring".  With it being 70% of the gameplay in most RPGs, it's no wonder it's the core of so many issues.

 

[Espon]

The default battle system is boring, in my opinion.  A lot of this comes from entering all your actions at the start of each round and then watching as everything plays out.  It keeps the player disengaged most of the fight which just makes it feel really tedious if you want to do any kind of grinding.  Even changing the turn structure so that actions are inputted when it's a character's turn to go, instead at the start of each round, can help alleviate this by reducing the amount of time the player is doing nothing.

 

[Engr. Adiktuzmiko]

maybe though I find other games [non-RM] that has the same system actually still fun to grind... but yeah even little things can help a lot...

 

[pawsplay]

From a practical standpoint, I discovered that setting the maximum class level during the game is a scripting pain, because by default, it's not something that is "saved." 

 

[Engr. Adiktuzmiko]

you just need to save it and load it... it's actually just one more line in the save and load methods assuming it's saved into an array... or if it's attribute of the classes, you can just opt to save the whole class itself

 

[pawsplay]

You have to edit Game_Actor class:

http://forums.rpgmakerweb.com/index.php?/topic/1629-just-enough-to-be-dangerous-setting-variables-for-actors/?p=16988