What could be good ideas to make RPG Maker games' gameplay a more pleasant experience to the player?

[A_Higher_Plane]

What can make RPG Maker games a more pleasant experience? I am not talking about making the gameplay better but making RM games a better, more pleasant experience? I thought that, for example, when during battle a character uses their ultimate move or something, to have the actor's face appear and a sound. I had also already mentioned voice acting in an another post. Also, I think that during the messages in the world map, using balloons a lot when appropriate makes things more pleasant. Would these be good ideas? What else can make things more pleasant? These can be paid or free things.

 

[Andar]

your first question should be "pleasant for whom?"

different players care for different things, and you will never be able to please everyone.
for example I'm completely indifferent to voice acting and usually completely ignore that.
what I care about is a well-thought out game mechanic mix, neither overloaded with useless functions nor so basic that it's boring.

 

[A_Higher_Plane]

Oh I mean pleasant for the player playing your game. Since I had played Final Fantasy X for my first time at 13 years old in 2003, I had really liked voice acting and prefer modern games with voice acting ever since. It is difficult to play games before that. I don't like reading a lot, which is why I read books so little. So I prefer the game having voice acting. I love games with good stories in them.

 

[Trihan]

Oh I mean pleasant for the player playing your game. Since I had played Final Fantasy X for my first time at 13 years old in 2003, I had really liked voice acting and prefer modern games with voice acting ever since. It is difficult to play games before that. I don't like reading a lot, which is why I read books so little. So I prefer the game having voice acting. I love games with good stories in them.

That's Andar's point. You'll never be able to please every player; the ideas you've mentioned will be one person's favourite thing and the thing another person hates the most. The best we can do is give our own personal takes on it.

 

[Andar]

prefer modern games with voice acting ever since. It is difficult to play games before that. I don't like reading a lot, which is why I read books so little.

and again that is another difference.
I like games with good and large background history, which is impossible to do with voice acting.
The games I prefer have build-in wikipedias with many pages of written background info.

 

[TheoAllen]

Simple. Ask your players what to fix.

 

[Iron_Brew]

This is way too broad a question. Everyone wants different things. The important thing here is to identify the niche you want to fill and then figure out how to fill it. Other people aren't gonna know that - if you have questions for feedback on a specific game, that's feasible.

Just asking "how do I make a good game" has too many different factors for any of us to be able to meaningfully answer this without establishing things through a ton of delineating questions.

 

[A_Higher_Plane]

Well how about this question then: What pleasant things can good RPG/RPG Maker games contain? Maybe the answers are some things that many people will like and few people will dislike. If it's always about a person's taste, then there won't be game ratings with some games, like that old game ET, being rated poorly while other games, like the Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild, being rated very well. I am asking for something truly good/pleasant to add to a game that is not gameplay-related, just pleasant.

 

[Iron_Brew]

Well how about this question then: What pleasant things can good RPG/RPG Maker games contain? Maybe the answers are some things that many people will like and few people will dislike. If it's always about a person's taste, then there won't be game ratings with some games, like that old game ET, being rated poorly while other games, like the Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild, being rated very well. I am asking for something truly good/pleasant to add to a game that is not gameplay-related, just pleasant.

Again, this is so dependent on factors about the content of the specific project that I fear any advice in this vein would simply be listing tropes people enjoy about RPGs and serve only to make anything created using said advice more generic.

That said, here's what I like in an RPG:

• Comfy towns
• Fun puzzles
• Good old-fashioned combat
• Cute party-centric moments
• Starting the game a nobody and by the end being able to punch God to death

But those are all just well known tropes for the genre that I happen to enjoy. A ton of people would look at those and say "those are played out/boring/****". That's why all of this is so depentent on taste, RPGs are such a broad genre that you can't just say "ET was a bad game, BOTW was a good one" because they are fundamentally incomparable experiences.

I hope this makes sense.

 

[RCXGaming]

Well how about this question then: What pleasant things can good RPG/RPG Maker games contain? Maybe the answers are some things that many people will like and few people will dislike. If it's always about a person's taste, then there won't be game ratings with some games, like that old game ET, being rated poorly while other games, like the Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild, being rated very well. I am asking for something truly good/pleasant to add to a game that is not gameplay-related, just pleasant.

I feel your greatest flaw with threads like these is that they feel like a collection of questions that can't really help anybody (both the people you're asking and yourself) due to how vague they are.

I agree with most of what everyone else said because the "pleasant-ness" of a game is not something you can quantify. What you would find pleasant, someone else would find annoying - repeat this ad infinitum since taste is subjective.

For example, I find modern settings especially lovely when compared to medieval ones since I find them more pleasant to be in. But I literally had someone commenting on one of my own games saying that's not their thing, and that was fine because everyone's built different.

@A_Higher_Plane, maybe you should focus on the things that you find pleasant in RPGs over asking other people?

 

[A_Higher_Plane]

• Comfy towns
• Fun puzzles
• Good old-fashioned combat
• Cute party-centric moments
• Starting the game a nobody and by the end being able to punch God to death

I think that all 5 of these "pleasant" things that you like exist in my most favorite game, Final Fantasy X. Actually, it is my personal taste that I just don't like puzzles or exploration. But this game has puzzles but not exploration. I don't feel like I like this game (FFX) less because it contains puzzles. It just isn't for me. So why not have these things in a game and make the game good? Maybe those who like it will like it even more but those who don't won't mind either.

 

[Trihan]

See, you've inadvertently hit the nail on the head when it comes to the inherent flaw with your own questioning: even you consider what's pleasant in a game to be so nebulous that you had to put it in quotes when it came to what someone else considers to be.

 

[A_Higher_Plane]

Well then let's consider what pleasant things can make a game good enough to be rated well?

 

[Iron_Brew]

Well then let's consider what pleasant things can make a game good enough to be rated well?

People have explained to you why this doesn't work though.
C'mon, dude - this doesn't make any sense.

 

[Trihan]

There is no universal answer to this. You can rephrase it seven ways to Sunday. You can ask it in slightly differing ways every time until the heat death of the universe. It won't make this any less subjective a topic. Ratings are a personal thing; my 10/10 might be your 5. Your 3 might be my 9. I mean you can definitely say that gamers like engaging gameplay, but what makes it "engaging" differs wildly from person to person. Some people love turn-based battles, others loathe them and prefer the system from FF12. Other people abhor FF12's system and prefer Vagrant Story's.

What would probably work better is asking what people enjoy seeing in games, but if you do that you need to understand that you're still getting personal opinions and not a one-size-fits-all list of stuff your game should have.

 

[RCXGaming]

Well then let's consider what pleasant things can make a game good enough to be rated well?

What the hell... that's literally a nothing question.

A game being rated well does not directly correspond to the actual quality of the game, for one.

For second, you're basically asking "what random things that other people like can I put into my games to make them enjoy the game more" which is super disingenuous since it feels like you're trying to appeal to your players' emotions over having a solid, defined structure for your game.

Which is bad. Really, really bad.

 

[The Stranger]

Well then let's consider what pleasant things can make a game good enough to be rated well?

Hire an artist to draw lots and lots of adult oriented artwork then slap it all in your game. The actual game doesn't need to be good after this. You can use default everything with no tweaks at all to the in-built systems, terminology used, etc. Just throw together a functional game (doesn't need to look pretty) with a flimsy plot, and be sure to trigger those naughty-naughty pictures. You'll get a boat load of positive ratings on Steam and elsewhere doing this. I mean, no one will actually be praising your game, just the work of the artist, but what does that matter? You've got high ratings after all.

 

[Trihan]

Hire an artist to draw lots and lots of adult oriented artwork then slap it all in your game. The actual game doesn't need to be good after this. You can use default everything with no tweaks at all to the in-built systems, terminology used, etc. Just throw together a functional game (doesn't need to look pretty) with a flimsy plot, and be sure to trigger those naughty-naughty pictures. You'll get a boat load of positive ratings on Steam and elsewhere doing this. I mean, no one will actually be praising your game, just the work of the artist, but what does that matter? You've got high ratings after all.

I wish this weren't the most accurate reply in the thread so far.

 

[TheoAllen]

Well then let's consider what pleasant things can make a game good enough to be rated well?

60 FPS, no lag

 

[A_Higher_Plane]

How is this question more unreasonable than all those questions asking "how to make the battle system good?" and overall "how to make an RPG Maker game good?" that get answers with tips & tricks?