What are the #1 mistakes that RPG Maker games make?

[Dalph]

I usually use both facesets and nameboxes and I don't have problems with it.

Quite frankly this is not an issue but only a personal preference.

People can use what they want in their games, personally I don't care.

 

[Traveling Bard]

Interesting topic! Currently taking notes to in order to make some of these minor but necessary changes to my own game I like what is being said about eventing > scripting earlier on because I've found that you can do A LOT without even touching the script editor. I have to say that vx ace really puts the world at your feet when it comes to creating skills and using formulas. You want it so that the more gold you have the stronger all of your attacks are? Done! You want it so that this particular skill does more damage to an enemy that is stunned or some other status effect related condition? Done! You want this skill to have a chance of setting this particular enemy on fire(status effect)? DONE! I mean it's great. I'm just starting to really see the power that they give you just by default. Not dissing scripts, just saying you should try it in events before you look to make changes to the script editor *shrug*

So I'm in line with the actual topic at hand, my pet peeves are:

1. Accuracy of attacks. Particularly high cost 100% TP attacks or the mage/priest normal attack that does little damage that will miss. I can understand the giant ax wielding guy who does a lot of damage to have his ax have like 85%-90% accuracy, but to hold the cloth wearing guys/gals to the same standard sucks <.<

2. Lots of gold with nothing relevant to spend it on.

3. Getting to a point in a battle where all your are doing is spamming "Super Secret Sword Technique X Eagle Tiger Slash!" over and over throwing in a heal or two here and there. It's tough to balance battles and boss fights, but with about half your game being played in the battle system...it definitely needs some love.

 

[Crash]

For me it's weak game play. I don't care if the mapping is not perfect or if story is bad as long as the gameplay *mainly battles* is cool and not just about spamming the same skill to win. Other thing that's odd is making skill tiers like: fire 1/fire 2/fire 3 etc as when you get the next tier of the skill, the former just becomes a useless filling spot on the character's kit.

 

[Sophitia]

Completely unbalanced games due to a small development team (or one person). You can find so many games with great graphics but barely a semblance of gameplay because the creator was 100% into sprite work and not much else. Or you can find games with decent engines but filled with typos, errors and a half-assed story or script.

It's like the people who spend 50 hours work on their title screen but never actually make a game or the person who's first thought on opening RPG Maker is to make a 500 hour game with a level cap of 9,999,999. Pace yourself and work within your limitations; your efforts will help expand them anyway.

It's kind of understandable though. Recruiting, especially if you're unknown, is tough and if you have some idea of a vision, it can be hard to give up complete control so others can interpret it for you. Still, there are lots of bad games that could be decent and decent games that could be great if their developers stepped back, admitted their weaknesses or lack of interest in certain areas, and tried to balance that out.

 

[Diretooth]

Fetch Quests. Especially the ones that require you to travel to a specific location and kill an extremely rare monster that has a 1/100 chance of dropping the uber-rare monster fang required to make the infinity-1 sword, which in turn requires a lengthy fetch/trading quest that is required to make the infinity+1 sword. (tropese for second strongest weapon and strongest weapon, respectively.)

It's even worse when it's required for the main plot.

 

[Indrah]

I'm not sure if this was comemnted yet and I'm not ready to read through 16 pages, so here goes.

Non-cohesive eventing style. (is that even correct)

What I mean is: when you "inspect" things SOMETIMES there is a visual cue, and sometimes jsut not. Make a design deicison:; either you show a visual cue ALL THE TIME, or you stablish what sort of items can be inspected WITHOUT a visual cue.

I hate it when SOMETIMES there will be shiny spots that indicate interaction, and sometimes not, leavign the palyer feeling WTF how was I supposed to know that would be interactable?

Teach the palyrs the rules of your game: what they can do and what they can't. It's impressively annoying when the rules are broken by the developer. I'm not even going to defend one style (showing visual cue/not), just STICK TO ONE THE WHOLE GAME. This is a problem with a LOT of RM games.

And for god's sake, if you're NOT using visual cues, make sure you teach the player to SEARCH THE INTERACTABLE ITEMS SOEMHOW. Even somethign as simple as lockign him in a room and telling him to look around for a key. ANYTHING that will hint to the player that he CAN.

Also if you're using normal tiles as "pickable" items (plants etc) teach that to the player too. Sometimes I've accidentally discovered I could pick up flowers that were normal tiles and I was like what? I never knew this godamnit!

 

[Dark_Metamorphosis]

@ Indrah

I agree somewhat, but there's that thing called exploring as well. I mean a game that uses indicators for every single item, even secrets would be a total crap-fest. It should be easy to notice the main objects of course, but for some of the other loot it shouldn't. I feel like the player should be rewarded for exploring your world and find optional loot that the people that doesn't give a damn about exploring don't find. Like I said, reward the player for interacting with your world.

Now doing this properly could be a bit difficult however, but I think that if you establish a rule, and use the same boxes, holes in the ground, same cabinets, chests and whatever, then the player should know what to look for after a while. Hand-holding players, and say what they need to look out for, or how everything works is a big no-no for me. There should be a bit of hand-holding of course, but if the player doesn't have the energy to even learn a simple thing as to what is interactable, or even how the rules are setup, without being told about it. Then I guess the player should play something else.

I can't see the joy of having everything extremely logical and easy to find, I love it more if people give it a thought and say 'Hmm those holes had loot in them, I might as well keep an eye on them in the future".

Combining visuals on 'main-plot' interactable objects, and no visuals for the loot is what I'm planning to go for.

Just my 2 cents.

 

[Alexander Amnell]

@Dark_Metamorphosis I have to agree with Indrah completely on this one. If you don't want to 'hold the player's hand' by putting indicators above loot that can be missed that's fine (I like it best that way) but then having these indicators on the quest-related stuff just looks bad. Think about it a little, if it's important to the plot then that opens up the possibility of talking about it in dialogue, you can use this in most cases to sort of 'steer' the player towards where he/she needs to look for this quest-important item without having to show magical sparkles above it that just don't fit in with the fact that there are 3 other items in the room to find that don't stand out in that way. Even something as simple as a little pop up message that says something like "maybe we should take a closer look at some of this stuff." in the room where the quest item is would suffice if it is, say just a key to a locked door or something that there is no chance to actually establish a dialogue relating to it. This will prevent the people who aren't habitual looters in video games from passing the damn key 20 times and giving up but also doesn't lead him/her by the hand straight to it. The thing about hand-holding is, if you are going to do it then do it for pretty much everything, if not then avoid it like the plague because there are very few 'middle ground' players out there that want the developer to hold their hand in important places and to be left alone for others, and doing that risks pissing both sides of the fence off at the same time.

 

[Indrah]

@Dark: Exploration does not mean spamming the trigger button at every square. That is called masochism and also a WASTE OF MY fricking TIME.

If you don't want visual cues in your game, fine. But teach the paleyr what TYPES of items will yield results.

So for example, if some pots, open boxes or barrels may have items, make sure you teach the plaeyr THOSE TYPES are the sort they have to look out for, even if they don't have a visual cue or even have items all the time. Don't jsut et them loose and inspect every peice of furniture, because that's jsut bad design adn the paleyr may jsut get fed up.

Even the msot old FFs do this. You can sometimes find stuff in pots, closets, barrels, clocks, etc. But explorign beds or flwers will never do antyhing. it could be handled BETTER but it's still something.

And I don't meant teachignt he paleyris a popup tutorial that says "check the f*cking pots", for pete's sake. Just make sure you have it evru obvious early in the game (lik ahvign a pot alone in the room or in a position that will naturally attract the player isntead of jsut throwing you in there, pants or not.

TEACH YOUR PLAYER THE GODAMN RULES. PLAYERS ARE NOT OBLIGATED TO STUDY FOR YOUR GAME LIKE A TEST.

It's easy to compare this stuff to the olden FF games, but remember, the first rpgs had very little the in the way of decoration, but rtp-made games now have very ornate maps and there's a lot of furniture around. It's not like back in FF4, where all therw was were beds, cupboards and pots :I It's a totally different level of involvement to try adn check everything.

As for vital quest indicators: I would skip it totally unless it was somethign odd and without a obvious visual clue/location, like finding a key on a bare table or the floor. Otherwise it's jsut unbalanced and while maybe not totally dealbreaking, strange. I mean, you dont highlight switches and stuff so :I

And don't understimate the pwoer of just havign the party say soemthign alogn the lines of "lets take a closer look" "this room is interesting, I wonder if there's anything we could use around?" ANYTHING of the sort. It may help player switch gears even if they have not looked for loot before, as Alexander already pointed out. Besides, it's pretty noraml for people to say "lets look around", it's not inmersion breaking or anything unles you repeat yourself a lot (which you should not need to).

 

[Sharm]

Easiest way to teach someone that it can be searched is to reward them for that search in the very first screen they have control of the character in.  Anything that doesn't give them that reward during that first screen will be forever dismissed as just an object.  So if you want the player to look at pots, cabinets and chests you'll want to make sure that the first place has all three, they're easy to get to, mapped so they look like they're important, and they all do something even if it's just some special flavor text (animation or items are better).  After that just reinforce the players checking through the game with some Skinner Box techniques.  But if you don't do that and you want someone to use something it had better sparkle or be outlined or something to show that it's a special exception.

 

[Milennin]

@Dark: Exploration does not mean spamming the trigger button at every square. That is called masochism and also a WASTE OF MY fricking TIME.


If you don't want visual cues in your game, fine. But teach the paleyr what TYPES of items will yield results.

LOL, way to overreact to an optional something in a game. It's not like you'll suffer eternal damnation for missing that 3GP hidden in the wardrobe of a random NPC's house.


Also, I think you missed the point of his post where he mentioned consistency in the objects that might wield loot.

 

[Dalph]

Indrah is always right guys, even when she's wrong.

About the exploration\finding items thing:

I use particular sparkles for every hidden item, those sparkles will suddenly appear soon as player approaches near enough to that item. It looks nice and encourages the exploration to the player, without bothering him\her in pushing the trigger button on everything.

YES, I'M LAZY. XD

 

[Indrah]

Woah what? You telling me about overreaction, when you're way generalizing my statment? Yeah ok.

What, do you mean to tell me that you'd enjoy a game where you hd no hint. NO. HINT. WHATSOEVER. WHere stuff was?

Because I've played games like that. And it sucks.

But hey if that's your thing I'll ladly pass over that crap to you, no problem.

I'm not particuallty blaming Dark with that statment, I'm asnwering to mor eor less what he was saying. I'm saying that a game that has no rules over where you put stuff can kiss my ass. Beacuse sirously, if yhe game breaks its own rules, why should I care about it. it's jsut bad design.

If you can't wrap your head aroudn why stayign true to your game's rules is important, let's change the design area of the problem. Imagine you're in comabt. Usually, potions heal you. And then, suddenly, one potion doesn't and gives you antidote. What wait? Or maybe a skill sometimes attacks one and sometimes attacks all for no discerning reason.

Hey, let's be even more extreme. Imagine "sometimes" you hit enemies, and sometimes the player hits another ally FOR NO REASON AT ALL. Great game, eh?

And sure, that may be an exageration, but it's still game rues being broken all over the dayum place.

Again, I don't mind if inspection spots have no cues. AS LONG AS THE SYSTEM IS CONSTANT. What I despise is "sometimes" clues, "sometimes" not, totally arbitrarlity for no reason (and no, I don't mind plot vital spots being shiny, I mean THE SAME THINGS such as common loot).

It's not about being upset that "you missed 3gp". It's about the game absolutelt breaking any flow you may have gone into ebcause it's not sticking to one system and breaking your experience.

And elistist? Ahhaha am I turning into the perceived villain of this thread? Sure, strike me as elitist. I certainly don't have such a tolerance for crap design.

And if I come across as aggro: I just had to adress a friend who is being net-bullied, so yes, I'm not putting up with passive agressive or outright agressive stuff today. Forgive my high tension (or not, I'm not your mom to order you around).

And hey, know why this all pisses me off? Becuse a lot of people will be "eh, this is good enough" and then get extremly butthurt when others criticise their games. Don't pull lazy design and then get teary over bad crit.

SO YEAH INDRAH RAGEE AHH AHH LOOK AT ME IM EVIL.

With that out of the way: I personally don't dislike havign to inspect pots and stuff. But there are games thatd rove me up the walls since there was no rhyme or reason as to WHERE they would be. Likewise, many games do this successfully. I believe it's a newbie's msitake and honestly it's udnertsandable lack of scope/expereince when developing on the crunch, so just watch out of inconsistencies in design, the same you'd test for inconsistencies on the plot.

Right, I'm off to dev a bit more. I got that off my chest. Cya.

 

[Sharm]

Mr. Detective, personal attacks are not allowed. I'm hiding your posts.

 

[Housekeeping]

It's not like you'll suffer eternal damnation for missing that 3GP hidden in the wardrobe of a random NPC's house.

There's something about human psychology, though, that should be said here.  If someone said to me, "Hey, man, I hid several things in your house.  I'm not telling you how many things I've hidden, what they are, or give you any clue as to where they are, but they're there.  See you, buddy!"  I would lose my MIND because I would triple check everything in my house.  It's the same for games.  Just knowing that there might be something there causes me to enter full OCD mode, and it isn't fun or interesting, but I can't help myself, not because I'm missing three gold, but because I don't know WHAT I'm missing.  So, personally, I'm against hiding things everywhere unless there are indicators or at least a way to know how many hidden things are in each location.  I also hate sidescrolling games with hidden paths that aren't marked with anything until you run into them.  Once I find one path like that, I run into every wall in the game, and it's completely asinine.

 

[SLEEP]

something this discussion reminded me of (warning pet peeve): flavour text better have some flavour, no walking up to a bed and pressing space and it says "it's a bed!" ha ha that's so lazy its funny why bother.

 

[Dark_Metamorphosis]

@Dark: Exploration does not mean spamming the trigger button at every square. That is called masochism and also a WASTE OF MY fricking TIME.

If you don't want visual cues in your game, fine. But teach the paleyr what TYPES of items will yield results.

Yeah, I did say that I somewhat agreed with you at the start of my post

Having rules that explains what types of items you can interact with is of course vital. Like I said, use the same look on all the item chests, gold piles always looking the same etc, etc.

But I find it a bit difficult, since I have a hard time coming up with something that will feel neutral. If I highlight every interactable item, then what's the point of having secrets at all, and how would the player be glad or surprised when they found something hidden if everything is already marked out for them? On the other hand, if you don't come up with a rule and teach the player very early on what he can interract with, then we have another problem. I'm sure I'm having this problem because I'm a noob, and have low experience as it is. But I'm not sure how else I would go around this problem since highlighting EVERYTHING is a no-no for me.

The things you are saying about hinting with dialouges is actually very true, but then I guess you have to make it clear that It's a particular item that you are looking for, or else you would have to click on every object once again.

I'm not trying to say that you are wrong in your statement Indrah, after all you have tons and tons of more experience than me. I'm just saying that displaying every single item for the player takes out every urge of exploration, and that just kills it for me.

I forgot to say that I'm now using a 3 tiles proximity for when the indicators appears (for the main objects), which sort of follows the exploration rule but also splits up the optional items from the key ones. But like I said, I'm a noob at this and It's tough to make a neutral approach on this in my opinion.

On the other hand you can't make everyone happy.

Oh, and I surely didn't think you sounded like an elitist or replied to your post because I think your opionion smells (It doesn't).

Even the msot old FFs do this. You can sometimes find stuff in pots, closets, barrels, clocks, etc. But explorign beds or flwers will never do antyhing. it could be handled BETTER but it's still something.

Excactly. But didn't you find that out by interacting with those objects and figure it out yourself? When you find an item in a object more frequently than another, then you sort of understands which one you should look out for (just like the clocks in FF VI for example that usually holds an elixir). If you interact with a bed and 0 out of 5 times nothing happens, and you instead interact with a barrel and 2 or 3/5 times you get loot. Then you would think that you would understand pretty soon what kind of objects you should look for.

@Dark_Metamorphosis I have to agree with Indrah completely on this one. If you don't want to 'hold the player's hand' by putting indicators above loot that can be missed that's fine (I like it best that way) but then having these indicators on the quest-related stuff just looks bad.

You have a point here. But in my opinion, using indicators when you are in a specific proximity of the item is still something that I think would contribute to the exploration overall. I have seen it in other games, and It's more or less the way I enjoy it (And I try to think about stuff that I enjoy when making my game (Even though they might not be the best for everyone, in fact it might be totally the opposite xD). I have also had occasions in games where I have ran pass the item for the main objective since It doesn't give any hints as to where it is.

I have also had people playing my game having trouble finding some of the main items when I couldn't use the animated sparkle like I wanted to. This was a big factor to why my game broke the rule before I fixed this. I had animated sparks for interactable objects that was a part of the main objective, while the items you could pick up wasn't (since I couldn't use a event, on a event). I also hated the fact that the player could see the sparkle too easy and already at the other side of the game window. I don't think that main objective loot would go under the same rule, since they are not optional. You need these in order to continue, so why not make them a bit more obvious than the optional loot but still keep a portion of exploring in there anyway.

I don't know, maybe it does piss off players on each side but all I can say is that I find this very challenging (And for me It's how I enjoy it the most, so maybe I'm the only 'middle ground' player out there). I still think that a bit of hand-holding is necessary, at least when it comes to the main plot but for the optional stuff I believe that's a completely different story.

Maybe I just have to set my own opinions aside and think of the big picture instead, but It's still tough to balance it, it really is. Might be because I'm still a noob but I'm really struggling with deciding how I should work this out (And It's not the only system that bothers me xd).

Sorry for my rambling

 

[Indrah]

@Dark: Lock our player in early on an tell them to find a key. maybe have all sorts of interacatable items aroud (books urns, whatever) so the player can get a feel for what's up and what's not.

You can also have npcs comment they forgot where they put things, or how they left something somewhere.

As for vtal items: simpyk givr them a graphic, not a shiny. You can tell that a switch is a switch easily, apply them to the rest: if you have to find a key, make a small key tile and put it somewhere, and similar. Likewse you can try for tricky, hard to see events have it so that when the player gets close to the area theyr eact to it, instead of having to find and press.

Personally I don't have much "item finding" for plot related stuff. Vital **** is often in chests or obvious, or is simply not an item but a room (as you enter autoevent triggers) or switches and similar, which are easy to tell apart from the decor.

And my opinion smells, yes. OF ROSES. BADASS PURPLE TOXIC ROSES *rocks out*

 

[Ksi]

You don't need to highlight every single interactable item but you had damn sure better let the player know within the first ten minutes what is interactable and what is not. If you give me 3GP in a barrel at the start of the game, I'm gonna inspect every barrel in the game. And may God help you if that was the only interactable barrel in the game because you just taught me that I find **** in barrels and now you've gone and changed the rules.

Consistency. If you put stuff in wardrobes, always put stuff in wardrobes. You don't need to point it out - the firs ten minutes allow for the player to learn the rules of your game. They will check everything (if they've half a brain) to see if there's hidden stuff and if there is, they will remember what they found said hidden stuff in. Then keep doing that through the game. If you don't want to do than then just use chests. Otherwise, keep it consistent. Don't just suddenly add items in boxes half-way through your game - you've just gotten through teaching your player that items only appear in chests. They aren't going to look in freaking boxes ever. Not unless directly told to do so - and in that case it's usually plot-box checking and a one-off thing.

You do not have to out-right tell the player "Hey, boxes~ They hold ****", just show them within the first 10 minutes - when the player is learning your rules - that it is so. If you do end up changing the rules...LET THEM fricking KNOW! Do not, I repeat, DO NOT just add items to **** and not let your player know.

Let's get in-depth with this. Why are there items added in hidden areas?

- Depth

- To aid the player

- "challenge/bait"

If the player doesn't find the item what depth does it add to the world? If the player doesn't find the item how in Frick's name is it supposed to help them?

You can make it a mini-challenge to find the items - that's not an issue. Hard to reach chests/barrels are always fun to find your way to (as long as the prize is a good payoff for running around the area to get to them. A potion for 20 battles is a **** prize, fyi. A new weapon... might be worth it) as long as you know you want to search that item. Looking around in things you haven't been taught to look in is a **** way to add 'challenge'.

So tell me, what use are items if your player can't fricking find them - not because they were stupid and didn't look in the already-established areas, but because you changed the fricking rules on them?

Fukking useless, that's what!

 

[Dark_Metamorphosis]

@Indrah

I do think that I give the player a lock in early on when it comes to interactions (like the holes in the ground in my first area), but I found it hard to have barrels, closets, urns etc in a forest that's been sealed off for centuries. So this part makes it difficult for me to set the point very early on (until they get into my second area).

Puting the key-items inside already obvious objects could be a fix for it for sure. But when it comes to (just an example here) my 'brick in the wall that looks out of place', I have a hard time finding a graphic that would resemble this in a obvious way. There are other examples like this, but I guess I just have to try and work that **** out somehow...

Still, I think that a indicator could be viable if It's used in a proximity of the item, and It's for key-items only.. would simplify things a lot, but I guess people would call that lazy xD

And my opinion smells, yes. OF ROSES. BADASS PURPLE TOXIC ROSES *rocks out*

Haha! xD *High five*