What would you like to see in RPG Maker Games?

[PsychicToaster]

-Competent writing that doesn't read as though it were written by a fifteen year old. The power of friendship is a lie. Also you were probably adopted.


-No random encounters. Random encounters were the result of the primitive technology used to make video games, not a stylistic choice. Happily plodding along only to be suddenly ambushed by an invisible seventy foot tall dragon is annoying. We live in an era where game systems are sufficiently advanced that you can show enemies on the map.


-A storyline that doesn't involve a quest to stop an ultimate evil after collecting six McGuffin's of Power. Smaller scale conflict works just as well.


-Dialogue that feels natural. Random strangers do not stand idly by on the street with a prepared list of things they just can't wait to tell you. People do not talk like this http://lpix.org/sslptest/index.php?id=224


-Unique, or at least innovative, battle system. Turn-based battles are fine, but at least try to incorporate something fresh in there.


-Larger maps. One or two screen maps are boring, despite the common idea floating around these forums that smaller maps equals more detail. It doesn't. Transferring maps every five feet is irritating and you're more likely to forget which way is which after doing it so many times.


-No chibi sprite style. Not every likes anime. 


-Less elemental magic and more well-designed spells. Fireball? Neat, I guess.. Fireragagagaball? Piss off. 


-Non-linear gameplay. This doesn't have to mean open world.


-Less maze-like cave and dungeon design. Mazes are for mice. I am not a mouse.


-Real choices. No, not the illusion of choice. Actual choices that effect the outcome of a quest or even the game.


-Fresh takes on character classes and races. 

 

[TheOriginalFive]

A story where you know the opposing teams are almost evenly matched, instead of the protagonist being a complete underdog. Had a bad experience with an MMO that had the villain team constantly winning (also partly due to bad balancing and glitches that always benefited said team) until the point where the admins decided:


1) That player vs. player was the only viable option.


2) They couldn't think of a way to make heroes come back.


3) There was no point in continuing the story.


As a result, my current project is an attempt to continue the abandoned game where the official story left off.

 

[Warpmind]

A story where you know the opposing teams are almost evenly matched, instead of the protagonist being a complete underdog. Had a bad experience with an MMO that had the villain team constantly winning (also partly due to bad balancing and glitches that always benefited said team) until the point where the admins decided:


1) That player vs. player was the only viable option.


2) They couldn't think of a way to make heroes come back.


3) There was no point in continuing the story.


As a result, my current project is an attempt to continue the abandoned game where the official story left off.

Okay, now I'm curious as to which MMO this was... Not that I'd play it, mind, but I might want to look into the matter, to see what they did wrong.

 

[TheOriginalFive]

HeroSmash by Artix Entertainment. Here's why they refused to continue the game in 2014. In 2012, they decided to implement PvP wars as a stopgap measure for one side constantly winning.


They started PvP in late 2011. However, if you have the time to sift through the other design notes, there is almost no mention of any storyline after October 2011. A new visitor probably wouldn't know unless they were told beforehand. As a former player, I observed that the staff gradually became either burnt out or too stuck-up to care about the game.


To make matters even worse, the game's subscriptions were pulled BEFORE any official announcements were made. It was literally an announcement after the fact. Here's an archive of the forum announcement, as well as the design notes for the months of June-July 2014.

 

[stupid enough to like FF13]

   I'd also like to see more morally grey characters, and I don't mean like the morally grey where you as the player can simply choose between morally black and white selections such as "will you keep the expensive locket you found and sell it later or go over to the woman crying over her lost locket five feet away from where you found it and surrender it to her." I'm talking about the kind of morally gray characters who have serious flaws yet can still be sympathized with. Characters like Phillip Strenger/The bloody baron who is by all accounts a despised and horrid person  detested by all until you get the whole story, realize that given his circumstances he truly tried his best to do the right thing more often than not and the cataclysm that was his family life at games start was no less the fault of his wife's actions than his own.

The Witcher games certainly aren't the only games with this problem, but frankly, it annoys me when a game tries to pretend things are morally grey when they blatantly aren't, despite the writers' attempts to make excuses for characters who are inarguably terrible people. You can make a villainous character sympathetic, but that doesn't amount to dumping white paint on all of the black-hearted things they do.


I'd much rather have a good ol'-fashioned heroes vs. villain affair than a story that tries to stick up for horrible people. Frankly, I love good ol'-fashioned heroes vs. villain affairs in JRPGs. There's nothing wrong with a game where it's a band of companions facing off against evil gods. (Or a series that uses that premise three games in a row. X3)


And I'll be blunt, because this subject has come up on this thread and the other thread a few times. I love getting an Awesome Killstick, and I love getting an Awesome Killstick +1. And in most games, your equipment steadily gets better. But with spells, it really is such a visceral pleasure to go from Electric Death to Hot Electric Death, and eventually Uber Electric Death. It's nothing but bigger damage numbers for more MP? I don't care, because it's that's feeling of "now I can kick bigger butts, and mega-kick the butts I've been kicking previously". You certainly can make a game where new abilities aren't just "Electric Death + Hot", but one of the simplest joys of an RPG is that extra oomph of power from going from "Fira" to "Firaga". (And also, flashy new spell animations!)

 

[Lars Ulrika]

What I would like to see? Globally, more stuff done correctly in fact. I don't care if your setting is light-hearted with lil' rabbits and cat-girls if it's done well. You can deliver me a front-view standard battle system, I don't care as long as it's well crafted. Throw me a dark lord of doom who abducts princess Waldo if you wish, but spice it with some extra personal flavor. You want to throw generic snes music at me? Fine, but chose the right ones to set the mood. 


This said ,some things that would please me more specifically :


- Less fantasy settings! PLEASE PRETTY PLEASE.


- More well-crafted characters who don't sound like a walking cliche. Here again, you wanna make that (stupid) hero who is grumpy "I've suffered so much"? Ok, but DO.IT.WELL. Stop the violins and the "I'm so badass dark hero" a minute and think about what you could add to give extra flavor to him.


- More well-crafted battles over "look at that new awesome custom system which I don't really know how to use but look the UI is so custom and wow that super arty menu which is such a mess but so wow eye-candish".

That would be pretty much my only requests. Surprise me. Even with a seemingly trope-fest.

 

[Chaos17]

I would like Rpg maker games in general to cover the bascis of rpgs like Etrian Odyssey serie does.


Like someone said, making something unique but not well executed will be more annoying than something cliché.


Also that dev think of player to have fun.

 

[Alexander Amnell]

@lilyWhiteI guess we just have different mindsets here then. I've experienced to much in life to feel comfortable demonizing individuals absolutely because things are rarely as cut and dry as they seem. That's why I enjoyed the witcher games so much, I'm by no means trying to say that The Bloody Baron was a good man (picking the absolute most monstrous example in the game to try and prove my point here), or that he ever somehow redeemed himself for all the ****ty mistakes he's made, only that I can sympathize with his own tragedies and that he's not really the villain that the game portrays him as. For you it's cut and dry "no questions he's a monster", and maybe he is by the end but I found a lot of sympathy for him by the end of his arc in the story, which I didn't expect in the least.

Spoiler

I know I'm going way to in depth and off coarse here but I can't really articulate why I think the Witcher does such a good job with morally grey choices otherwise.


Negative facts presented in game about Strenger:

• He's a traitor to Temaria, maybe treason to a dead country is bad but what exactly is Geralt working with Nilfgaard all game then?
  
• He murdered his wife's lover
  
• He imprisoned his wife
  

Negative fallacies presented in game that turn out different than they first appear

• The Bloody Baron/War Criminal affair: It's spread far and wide that the baron is a ruthless warlord, and that as a soldier he committed war crimes which play well into the wifebeater narrative that's being painted of him concurrently. It becomes apparent through a few notes and talking to the baron, however, that they are highly exaggerated. He got his name when a bunch of red dye got spilled from a warehouse into the river, and rumors spread that the baron ordered his men to slaughter surrendering enemies to a man and that the 'river ran red with blood'. Though he killed not a man, in addition to which from everything gleaned through the story the baron isn't a bad ruler, just one beset with famine, multiple wars and subjugation by another country that the baron is actually in his own way protecting his people from. When a starving child and an injured wanderer are brought to his estates he tends to them, employs the child to "work" in the kitchens and does everything he can to help the wanderer. To make matters more interesting, the one note in villages that warns people about 'the horrors of selling goods to crow's perch' happens to claim to sell the same produce as the man who brings Ciri and Gretka to the baron who's cart was ransacked by a werewolf, who the baron does shout out of his castle because the people he brought them were not his wife and daughter, as the man was trying to receive the reward offered for finding them for them instead.
  
• The wifebeater affair: It's found when working with the pellar that:
  

1. The Baron's wife had a miscarriage after a fight with her husband.


2. The Pellar's goat says that the baron beats his wife.


3. The Baron is an alcoholic with a terrible temper (A.K.A a mean drunk)


What the interesting thing here is that later on, if you are inclined to hear the baron out (which you don't have to do by the way, if you being so sure the baron is just an rear end in a top hat you can just tell him to stop making excuses for his failures and monstrosities in game, so the game developers here don't even force a false moral gray area on you as the player) you learn that he's only struck his wife in literal defense of his own life. This doesn't excuse him from the act or what came before it, but when a woman pulls a weapon and tries to kill me, I'm inclined to abandon my "never lay hands on a woman" policy if necessary, and I can't fault Strenger for this without being a hypocrite because of that.


   In the end we can lay three actual crimes at The Bloody Baron's feet for which there truly is no excusing, the rest all have contrary evidence to find if you like reading random notes and such. He's a traitor to his country, because he accepts Nilfgaardian rule and used it to gain power. He killed his wife's boyfriend after his wife told him that "she was leaving him and taking Temara with her!" and then forced her to stay with him instead. Yes, this is a morally black area, but ask yourself what the man's alternatives were. He'd spent his adult life fighting to make a comfortable life for his wife and children, kept them taken care of while living the soldier's life and dreaming of the day he can retire on an officers pension and live out old age surrounded by kids and grandkids but he sees his country shattered in war throughout all of that. Broken and defeated, knowing his country was over he returns home to find his wife had moved on from him long ago, and that she didn't want to be in his life or allow his own flesh and blood daughter in his life either. This is why I can't just say he's a black-hearted monster unworthy of redemption. No, you cannot just throw white on a cesspit of black and somehow purify someone but that's not the point, what I see is not a monster but a good man broken long ago, who's devoted himself to trying in vain to whitewash his past. It's all he does after that day that everything fell to ruin.


   He becomes a traitor to give his family the life he'd always promised them, the dream he had for himself. This ended in failure to as his wife tries time and time to kill him, forcing him to defend himself which means he ends up hitting her. As much as he tries to hide it, of course his daughter sees this and hates him, and he lets her. It's clear from Tamara's reaction in game that she knows nothing of her mother's involvement in her father's "drunken rage" that she taunts, insults and attacks him trying her best to see at least one of them dead. Instead he takes all that blame on himself, he doesn't make excuses and he knows what a monster he's become. I can't help but feel however, that the real baron and his real nature is how he acts around Gretka an Ciri, what he's done is inexcusable and because of this I prefer to save the kids of crookback bog, which in turn leads to events that include the baron's wife dying and the baron hanging himself but I can't help but feel sympathy for him. I wonder as a father myself how bad such a situation can become, and take into account that there are no laws for him to turn to, his country is in shambles and he's a deserter anyway for coming back for his family. Other than walking away and allowing his wife to take their daughter, killing his wife as well or killing himself there aren't any real recourse for the man to take beyond the botched misery he chose. In that kind of an extreme scenario I'd like to hope I'd have the strength to walk away and surrender everything important to me in the hopes that my misery protected my wife and children from misery, and if not I'm fairly certain I'd open my own veins before accosting a loved one, even if only by way of attacking their loved one.


   But I have my doubts, and though thankfully I live in a civil enough society that if god forbid something so heart-wrenching were to occur I'd have legal representation that would protect my rights as a parent. But take that safety net away, and I can easily sympathize with the baron and his hardships even if I can in no way condone what they've led him to.

   I'm curious as to what your definition of morally grey actually is as it pertains to games? To me it's where the things presented in game are meant to be questioned, when there are more than one side to the story and you as the player have to try to discern right from wrong as you see it using the information available and where you can be wrong if you don't seek out the whole story, or if you let your emotions rule your actions. The baron isn't a morally grey character but what you as a player do about him and all of those tales going around, what you piece together and what you don't absolutely are. So much so that I can't think of a better example of a game that presents such morality conflicts other than the Witcher, so if that's a cheap and fake version of moral ambiguity I'd very much like to know what games you've played that do it even better, because I haven't seen one that comes close (that isn't also a zany and irreverant comedy like Wasteland anyway). This thread being about what people would like to see in games, if my absolute default for moral ambiguity is something of a joke I'd very much like to learn about the games out there that did that right,

 

[Wavelength]

-Dialogue that feels natural. Random strangers do not stand idly by on the street with a prepared list of things they just can't wait to tell you. People do not talk like this http://lpix.org/sslptest/index.php?id=224

This was hilarious!

 

[PsychicToaster]

@lilyWhiteI guess we just have different mindsets here then. I've experienced to much in life to feel comfortable demonizing individuals absolutely because things are rarely as cut and dry as they seem. That's why I enjoyed the witcher games so much, I'm by no means trying to say that The Bloody Baron was a good man (picking the absolute most monstrous example in the game to try and prove my point here), or that he ever somehow redeemed himself for all the ****ty mistakes he's made, only that I can sympathize with his own tragedies and that he's not really the villain that the game portrays him as. For you it's cut and dry "no questions he's a monster", and maybe he is by the end but I found a lot of sympathy for him by the end of his arc in the story, which I didn't expect in the least.

Spoiler

I know I'm going way to in depth and off coarse here but I can't really articulate why I think the Witcher does such a good job with morally grey choices otherwise.


Negative facts presented in game about Strenger:

• He's a traitor to Temaria, maybe treason to a dead country is bad but what exactly is Geralt working with Nilfgaard all game then?
  
• He murdered his wife's lover
  
• He imprisoned his wife
  

Negative fallacies presented in game that turn out different than they first appear

• The Bloody Baron/War Criminal affair: It's spread far and wide that the baron is a ruthless warlord, and that as a soldier he committed war crimes which play well into the wifebeater narrative that's being painted of him concurrently. It becomes apparent through a few notes and talking to the baron, however, that they are highly exaggerated. He got his name when a bunch of red dye got spilled from a warehouse into the river, and rumors spread that the baron ordered his men to slaughter surrendering enemies to a man and that the 'river ran red with blood'. Though he killed not a man, in addition to which from everything gleaned through the story the baron isn't a bad ruler, just one beset with famine, multiple wars and subjugation by another country that the baron is actually in his own way protecting his people from. When a starving child and an injured wanderer are brought to his estates he tends to them, employs the child to "work" in the kitchens and does everything he can to help the wanderer. To make matters more interesting, the one note in villages that warns people about 'the horrors of selling goods to crow's perch' happens to claim to sell the same produce as the man who brings Ciri and Gretka to the baron who's cart was ransacked by a werewolf, who the baron does shout out of his castle because the people he brought them were not his wife and daughter, as the man was trying to receive the reward offered for finding them for them instead.
  
• The wifebeater affair: It's found when working with the pellar that:
  

1. The Baron's wife had a miscarriage after a fight with her husband.


2. The Pellar's goat says that the baron beats his wife.


3. The Baron is an alcoholic with a terrible temper (A.K.A a mean drunk)


What the interesting thing here is that later on, if you are inclined to hear the baron out (which you don't have to do by the way, if you being so sure the baron is just an rear end in a top hat you can just tell him to stop making excuses for his failures and monstrosities in game, so the game developers here don't even force a false moral gray area on you as the player) you learn that he's only struck his wife in literal defense of his own life. This doesn't excuse him from the act or what came before it, but when a woman pulls a weapon and tries to kill me, I'm inclined to abandon my "never lay hands on a woman" policy if necessary, and I can't fault Strenger for this without being a hypocrite because of that.


   In the end we can lay three actual crimes at The Bloody Baron's feet for which there truly is no excusing, the rest all have contrary evidence to find if you like reading random notes and such. He's a traitor to his country, because he accepts Nilfgaardian rule and used it to gain power. He killed his wife's boyfriend after his wife told him that "she was leaving him and taking Temara with her!" and then forced her to stay with him instead. Yes, this is a morally black area, but ask yourself what the man's alternatives were. He'd spent his adult life fighting to make a comfortable life for his wife and children, kept them taken care of while living the soldier's life and dreaming of the day he can retire on an officers pension and live out old age surrounded by kids and grandkids but he sees his country shattered in war throughout all of that. Broken and defeated, knowing his country was over he returns home to find his wife had moved on from him long ago, and that she didn't want to be in his life or allow his own flesh and blood daughter in his life either. This is why I can't just say he's a black-hearted monster unworthy of redemption. No, you cannot just throw white on a cesspit of black and somehow purify someone but that's not the point, what I see is not a monster but a good man broken long ago, who's devoted himself to trying in vain to whitewash his past. It's all he does after that day that everything fell to ruin.


   He becomes a traitor to give his family the life he'd always promised them, the dream he had for himself. This ended in failure to as his wife tries time and time to kill him, forcing him to defend himself which means he ends up hitting her. As much as he tries to hide it, of course his daughter sees this and hates him, and he lets her. It's clear from Tamara's reaction in game that she knows nothing of her mother's involvement in her father's "drunken rage" that she taunts, insults and attacks him trying her best to see at least one of them dead. Instead he takes all that blame on himself, he doesn't make excuses and he knows what a monster he's become. I can't help but feel however, that the real baron and his real nature is how he acts around Gretka an Ciri, what he's done is inexcusable and because of this I prefer to save the kids of crookback bog, which in turn leads to events that include the baron's wife dying and the baron hanging himself but I can't help but feel sympathy for him. I wonder as a father myself how bad such a situation can become, and take into account that there are no laws for him to turn to, his country is in shambles and he's a deserter anyway for coming back for his family. Other than walking away and allowing his wife to take their daughter, killing his wife as well or killing himself there aren't any real recourse for the man to take beyond the botched misery he chose. In that kind of an extreme scenario I'd like to hope I'd have the strength to walk away and surrender everything important to me in the hopes that my misery protected my wife and children from misery, and if not I'm fairly certain I'd open my own veins before accosting a loved one, even if only by way of attacking their loved one.


   But I have my doubts, and though thankfully I live in a civil enough society that if god forbid something so heart-wrenching were to occur I'd have legal representation that would protect my rights as a parent. But take that safety net away, and I can easily sympathize with the baron and his hardships even if I can in no way condone what they've led him to.

   I'm curious as to what your definition of morally grey actually is as it pertains to games? To me it's where the things presented in game are meant to be questioned, when there are more than one side to the story and you as the player have to try to discern right from wrong as you see it using the information available and where you can be wrong if you don't seek out the whole story, or if you let your emotions rule your actions. The baron isn't a morally grey character but what you as a player do about him and all of those tales going around, what you piece together and what you don't absolutely are. So much so that I can't think of a better example of a game that presents such morality conflicts other than the Witcher, so if that's a cheap and fake version of moral ambiguity I'd very much like to know what games you've played that do it even better, because I haven't seen one that comes close (that isn't also a zany and irreverant comedy like Wasteland anyway). This thread being about what people would like to see in games, if my absolute default for moral ambiguity is something of a joke I'd very much like to learn about the games out there that did that right,

Dark Souls is a perfect example of a morally ambiguous game. Well...provided you've actually figured out the story, which is itself quite ambiguous lol.

 

[Wavelength]

There are a lot of things I'd like to see less of in RPG Maker games ("morally grey" party members, healing, long spell animations) and lots of things I'd like to see done better (creative class design, realistic world/region design, NPC dialogue), and I'm tempted to make this into a backdoor list of things that I don't like.


But let's do our best to discuss things we would strictly like to see more of!  Here's my personal wishlist for RPG Maker games:



Multiple Solutions to Plot Flags.  If the story requires getting past a few guards at the gate to a castle with a dungeon underneath, your average game would have the characters say "we can't get past them, let's sneak into the dungeon through the sewers". That's one fine way to get in, but allow me to try to fight my way past them instead.  Allow me to lie about why I'm there and then try sneaking into the dungeon.  Allow me to find someone else in the world who has the connections to get me in.


Easily-Avoidable Visual Encounters.  I believe this is simply player-friendly design.  Let the player fight as much or as little as they want, at their own pace, without literally asking them "do you want to fight".



Character-Driven Plots.  I believe that the best types of plots are ones that are driven by their characters' actions and aspirations (as opposed to some event or ascribed trait that 'happens' to them) - in other worlds plots that simply could never happen (or would not make any sense) with a different set of protagonists.  But I see shockingly little of this in RPG Maker games in particular, even from some of our better writers.


Highly Visible Antagonists.  The more I see of the game's antagonists before I fight them, the better.  This doesn't only apply to the game's Big Bad, either.


Landmarks in Dungeons & Explorable Areas.  They look cool, they give character to the map, and they aid in player navigation.  Why not have more of these?


Repurposing of Stats.  By RPG Maker's default design, some stats will be nearly useless for certain types of characters (ATK, MAG), some stats will be nearly useless in some games (AGI), and some stats will be universally useless (LUK).  Repurposing the LUK stat, for example, requires very little (if any) scripting and can create completely new and interesting ways to build your characters that feel good and expand the player's options.


Large Collections of Items.  Even if the Beef Stew and the Roast Turkey and the Au Gratin Potatoes and twenty other food items all basically do the same thing (heal a party member), their presence still provides a lot of interest to some players like me, assuming their descriptions are well-written.  Adding in some items with interesting effects (stop time in battle, allow free casting of spells for a short time, raise one stat at the cost of another, summon enemy parties to battle against...) makes things even more interesting.



Mini-maps.  Once again, simply player-friendly design, and there are scripts out there to make it easy.  If the game is exploration-heavy, you can have the mini-maps reveal only as the player explores each bit of terrain - this will still go a long way toward helping the player avoid getting completely lost or misoriented after battle.


Laser-Sharp Content Focus.  Most completed games on RPG Maker are JRPGs.  They have - in pretty much equal weight - battles, towns, dungeons with bosses, a bit of world exploration, items, equipment treadmills, sidequests... all just because those are the trappings of most JRPGs, and not because they are truly adding to the experience.  I'd like to see more games pick one or two of these and really give them a strong focus in the game experience, downplaying and streamlining (or even removing) the other elements that don't directly serve the game's core experience.

 

[Makio-Kuta]

Actually, what I'd really like to see more of in RPGMaker games is endings. Ya know? Finished games. ;D