People who diss RPG Maker agitate me.

[GasaiYuno]

All of those Steam topics about how RPG Maker isn't a real game creation software and it doesn't take much to make a game at all. 

Ugh, those people annoy me. :/ 

It also turns me off from wanting to charge people for any RPG Maker game I'd make that is commercial quality. (custom sprites, graphics, etc)

So, to commercial RPM members / devs, how do you handle people who diss on your game for being RPG Maker?

 

[boldpaste2]

I give them the rpg maker theme.

Easy enough for a child, powerful enough for a developer.

 

[GasaiYuno]

I give them the rpg maker theme.

Easy enough for a child, powerful enough for a developer.

Tempted to do that. lol 

It honestly is very easy to use for anyone.

 

[Arin]

@topic title: Yeah, me too.

 

[Candacis]

I think, it is very easy to talk bad about a product, if you never or rarely used it. Those people will not be your market for sprites, graphics anyway.

What RPG Maker would need to get more recognition, maybe for a future version, would be a option to make those games for tablet and smartphone and then a looot of people will stop *****ing about the Maker, because when I look out there in the mobile game market, there are a lot of simpler and worse looking games than the RPG Maker has to offer.

Of course, you can't compare RPG Maker to Unity or some other 3D game program, but those programs are not easy to get into. RPG Maker is very easy to use and to get into and that is one big plus for this program.

 

[Dalph]

Everyone are entitled to their own opinion, no matter how stupid the opinion is.

Don't make hasty and baseless opinions influence you however, those people probably haven't even tried the tool, so they know basically nothing about it.

If they tried it and don't like it then fine, that's their tastes and their problem too (certainly not ours), it's childish to argue or bother.

The best thing to do is to press the awesome Ignore Button.

 

You will always find someone who complains about something, people are never satisfied and so dumb.

 

[Sharm]

Laugh at their narrowmindedness and make money anyway.

 

[drago453]

First off, I'mm pretty sure this is taking it out of context, but when you say commercial quality is custom sprites and graphics, I'd beg to differ. Take Last Dream for example, as default as it can get, yet still a ton of people enjoy it. Anyways, to people who diss RPG Maker, I tell them to download the lite version of Ace and make a masterpiece for me.

 

[Alexander Amnell]

   I agree with Dalph completely here, people are just to judgmental in general and will always be that way. (Look on our own '#1 problem with rpgmaker games' forum if you don't believe me, opinions run the gambit from reasonable quips to extremely polarized "All rpg's must conform to rules A-ZX9 and all that don't are failures created by lazy, pathetic people!" and these are the opinions of people USING rpgmaker!) 

   All in all rpgmaker can be powerful, it depends on the work of the developer and makes that job easier, if you work hard and market correctly you'll likely succeed, (being a hobbyist I've not personally experienced this but I've witnessed several others do so) and there are other places other than steam to sell your games. The perception itself stems from the fact that there are people in the past who saw rpgmaker + steam or rpgmaker + kickstarter = easy cash and just threw some **** together and tried to sell it, so now when people see a game with rpgmaker graphics, if they haven't experienced much of them before they perceive it in terms of those lazy projects of the past and write it off. It's a shame that's how it works, you just have to learn to deal with it though.

 

[Helladen]

All of those Steam topics about how RPG Maker isn't a real game creation software and it doesn't take much to make a game at all. 

As long as you stray away from the general developers of RPG Maker you're fine, they just categorize you with the rest of them.

 

[ThatMaestroGuy]

Let them say as they please. You can never please everyone. Had Einstein listened to what people told him when he was young, he'd have amounted to nothing...like the people around him expected.

All in all, just do you. You'll never go wrong doing you.

 

[Allusion]

I've never personally encountered someone who's dissed my using of RPG Maker, but I know there is a ton of stigma behind the name. (Namely when it comes to commercial success.) I think, as others have said, that they turn up their noses because they haven't sat down and tried to do anything with it. Much less anything good, much less anything they could charge for.

The 'easiest' way to  commercialize game is by using RTP only resources, and putting it up for five dollars. But those resources don't do your events for you, or think of your plot, or balance your battles/other dynamics. or make your maps make sense, or keep your dungeons interesting. No matter what they say, you (and all of us) know that making a game is far more than just slapping graphics onto a grid and calling it a day. It challenges every creative and logical part of your brain. But when you walk away with a game under your belt, you know you've achieved something~ And you've learned a lot by then, which to me is golden. So...let them not know how awesome RPG Maker is. More gold for us! >3

 

[Gigglemoo]

Almost every Steam forum is like that. Best to stay away from them completely.

 

[Victor Sant]

People who say that are just random haters. RPG Maker do give enough tools to make really great games. But in some people mind, a good game = 3D crap everywhere.

Those "pseudo-gamers" should be just ignored.

 

[??????]

Why stay away from them?
Why not hold your head up high and say "YES,  I made this using RPG Maker. I Spent hours of my life to not only learn the program and all its features, but I also spent the time to create my own, commercial, rpg..."

I find that the majority of people who diss something are either jealous of the people who can/do utilize it correctly or simply one of the webs notorious 'Troll's' ^_^

 

[Zoltor]

Sure you can  technically just use the default systems to make a RPG(not even using eventing to custom make "systems", nevermind scripts), but that would be a pretty crappy game.

People don't realize the event command, do exactial what different function in a code does(the engine just has many of the base funtions of code has, just translated into a real language, so people don't need to learn some new custom language, inorder to make a game.

Seeing how RPG maker mainly(the exception, is some of the major things common in all RPGs ever created, wich is hard coded in the engine, but even such things could be built upon or even changed completely, you can even change how the engine interacts with the hard coaded data in the database altogether, which makes even the major hard coded things, completely customizeable) only has the the most rudimentally base operations, It's extremely flexible, as It's left up to the developer how to put it all together.

The proc in designing systems/things in general for a game, is the exact same as it would be, if you had to code everything from scratch, the functions of coding, was just translated into english, that's all.

People have no idea how flexible RPG Maker is, all it is, is a development tool, how you use it, is completely upto the developer. 

Also you can import your own stuff(sprits, music, pics, windowskins, exc), plus for the few limitation the tools does have, there's a coding/scripting option you could use on a "as needed" case, to bypass the limitation.

People are under the impression, just because it has a default system(which is extremely basic), and offers an array of pre packaged graphics/music, that must be all people can, and do use.

People that put a actual effort into making a game, doesn't just hit a bunch of ok propts, and boom done, you have a game, All RPG Maker is, is a development tool, how its used, is completely upto the person developing the game.

 

[Pern]

RPG Maker gets some flack around other game making communities for some reason. People assume whatever you make with it is mediocre at best and harp on it for it's limitations, when in actuality it's pretty powerful. Maybe because it's fairly easy to learn and those who spend much of their time in more 'respectable' engines hate to think others can accomplish a good amount with something they don't approve of. 

 

[Zoltor]

RPG Maker gets some flack around other game making communities for some reason. People assume whatever you make with it is mediocre at best and harp on it for it's limitations, when in actuality it's pretty powerful. Maybe because it's fairly easy to learn and those who spend much of their time in more 'respectable' engines hate to think others can accomplish a good amount with something they don't approve of. 

A phrase that describes the RPG maker tools perfectly, is easy to learn, hard to master.

The major problem the RM community has, is due to it being easy to learn/just use the hard coded defaults in the database settings, RPG Maker draws in a lot of people that are just plain lazy(aka they want to make a game, but at the same time, don't want to put in the effort needed to make a game), so natually a lot of crappy games get released.

It's no different then a commercial game released by a major company though, if the company put all their effort into creating CG movies, and little effort(if any at all) goes into making the systems, maps, ect for the game, is it any wonder as to why that game is doomed to suck.

It's the same with RPG Maker, the game is only gonna be as good, as the effort put into it, combined with your knowledge of game/mechanic design(this comes down to just really understanding the logic+ your experience, so game/mechanic design is pretty easy to learn),

 

[Pern]

Yeah, I'd have to agree. Lack of effort on the individual's part can dampen people's image on the maker itself. When a fantastic game come around sometimes it's too little too late with all that negative stigma.

 

[seita]

From my understanding, the stigma in the Steam community comes from when RPG Maker first made its way onto Steam. I've talked about this in multiple places, including a few interviews for my project. There's a few key reasons that Steam users hate on RPG Maker games:

1. The RTP.
   A great resource for rpg devs, unfortunately it allows people to associate all RPG Maker games together because of the shared graphics. This is especially true if someones first interaction with an RPG Maker game is one rushed by an inexperienced dev to market. It doesn't matter so much if there are so many custom resources since most of them are made to work with the RTP, the most widely used graphical set for the engine. If the game uses the RTP as a base, people will assume everything in your game is RTP.
2. The Slogan.
   The slogan (despite not being an official one) "...perfect for beginners, while being powerful enough for experts..." is absolutely wonderful for bringing people into game development. Most critical gamers unfortunately will focus on "perfect for beginners" or "easy enough for beginners". This wouldn't be a problem if games made with RPG Maker weren't easily recognized as made with the engine. Then again, most games share the RTP and build off of it.
3. The Price Tag.
   Quite frankly, RPG Maker has been a very cheap gateway into game development, so much so that sacrificing one game to buy the engine automatically makes you a game developer. It's a low barrier entry into development which gives it a false sense of ineptitude.
4. The Steam Greenlight flood.
   Once RPG Maker became an engine staple available on steam, the three points above collided into a flood of quickly, cheaply, undercooked games submitted to Steam Greenlight. All of a sudden, there's a ton of RPG Maker games being voted on by millions of Steam users, 99% of which weren't ready to be shown to the public. New devs were overly eager to show off their creation and steam users were hit by disappointment after disappointment. Well made games shared the RTP, and were pushed into the pool of "meh just another RPG Maker game".

Despite all this, there are multiple things going for us devs.

1. They're a Vocal Minority.
   They bark loud but they're just chihuahua's. The best way to deal with them is to kick them into the other yard ignore them or clearly, politely, calmly respond.
2. Time Heals All Wounds.
   The longer you wait to introduce your RPG Maker game, the better. People forget the crappy games and hopefully by the time they see yours, they'll be willing to give it a chance.
3. Good Development Shows.
   If you put your heart, soul, hard work and experience into the game, it'll show and it'll translate. Just make sure you're as good as explaining and showing off your game as you are at making it, or get someone else to do it for you.
4. Resource Packs NOT RTP-compatible.
   I admit that even I feel the stigma when I see a game made in RTP. The exact opposite happens however when I see a game using a resource pack that doesn't go well with the RTP. The first time I saw the high-fantasy resource pack I was overcome with a NEED to play it. The first time I saw the DS pack, I immediately wanted to abandon my game and make a new one using it. If you can't get someone to make you your own tilesets, you have multiple, multiple alternatives.