Why people think Rpg maker is limited

[Ameer]

I used Rpg maker 2003 and honestly it was quite limited but in Mv you can do whatever you want using Javascript then why people still think it's limited

 

[TheoAllen]

It feels limited because it's beyond their capacity to make things. Common people use WYSIWYG editor and hoping that with the less knowledge they have, they could make everything just only by the intuitive editor. Plugins can expand the possibility, but it also comes with the learning curve that is the main barrier of it.

In short, it feels limited because they couldn't create a thing with ease.

 

[caethyril]

^ This; I think some people would simply rather blame the engine than their own lack of effort/creativity. That said, they may not realise what is possible with the tools provided. After all, even without scripting (e.g. RM2k(3)) you can achieve a lot with pictures/variables/etc. ^_^

 

[Tw0Face]

For me, the engine is limited because of the performance issues it comes along with. The newer an RPG Maker is, the slower it appears to be. Using RM2003, I was able to create everything I wanted with events. Using Vx Ace, I almost completely avoid using any parallel processes, as a single larger code can already make sure that your whole game runs with no more than 40 instead of 60 FPS.

Greetings,
Tw0Face

 

[Kuro DCupu]

Because of the impression and the final product.
Impression : It's called RPG Maker and the trailer show us how to make RPG esque only.
Final product : Check out all of RPG Maker games out there. How it has become its own genre / label.

I know RM has much potential. I believe it's because how the engine itself is "easy to learn", people tend to ignore the "hard to master" part.
After all, convenience only limit your creativity.

 

[Andar]

As said above, a lot of people believe that the computer should be able to read their mind and create the next blockbuster automatically.
Since the RPG-Maker fails to do this, it has to be limited.

Other people think that everything needs to be 3D and any engine that does not make a 3D-Game is limited.

and more variants along the line - and if you ask them what the RM is missing for them to call it limited, then you quickly realise that as the people above said the only real limitation is that those people are unwilling to put any work into what they want.

 

[_Shadow_]

Why people think Rpg maker is limited

Reason #1: Someone got no idea on game making. Doesn't even own a copy of the program. But hey, they have played so many games created with RPG Maker. RPG Maker exists for more than 19 years! The program is easy to use. Thus teenagers and trolls were making small projects, parodies and even trash games. We call this the free shovelware. Later on Steam emerged and shovelware came on Steam too as commercial products. In fact it is SO easy to make a very bad game using RPG Maker that many people tried. Stock graphics, stock music, a story, some sotck battle gameplay, that's it, can I have 1 Euro for that please? That happened with all the main gaming engines, even with unity, but RPG maker is distinct because it comes with stock graphics and it is really easier to produce something. True Fact though is that RPG Maker is a tool. It isn't responsible for what is made using it. If the creator sucks, well... the product will suck. It is like blaming the paintbrush for the bad painting someone had drawn.

Edit:
Shovelware for feedback and in order to get better is not shovelware at all. It is a good try and a next step to something better. I consider as shovelware:
a] A lazy project that someone doesn't care at all to polish it.
b] A game that is trash and someone asks money for it.
Take a look at this for more info:





Reason #2: Someone got a good idea on what is going on, on game making, used other engines with various assets and finds the asset management of RPG Maker limited. All right, I give them that. Other engines can get whatever you throw to them and rescale it appropriately. But they don't come with stock assets and most of the time developers have to sweat a little more to make things work properly. Adding that feature would destroy any simplicity the engine already has.

Reason #3: Experienced game developers and programmers criticize it all the time. The engine lacks some stuff they want out of the box. It also isn't 3D game oriented. Well Daa? Aren't you supposed to be a programmer? Just dive into the engine (code is visible) and create as many js plugins you need to fit your needs. Thus this third reason is like saying: "This engine is not for me." and I think they are right. If someone can create a custom engine or tangle with a more complex engine, then why try RPG Maker? You will be surprised but there is an answer: MV can create a fast prototype easily using stock graphics. It has a complete solution for RPG mechanics, menus and stuff and it is well supported by this community.

I find no reason this engine would be called limited. Even the most common one: OH! THE RESOLUTION IT IS RUNNING IS SO LOOOOW!
Yeah! Right. Because we need 4K resolution to make a retro-like classic jrpg....

(p.s. ninja'ed on some facts)

 

[Venima]

None of the reasoning I've seen so far touches my answers.

First of all, lets define what limited means. For me, a software tool can be limited in a number of ways: Intuitive design, expandability, productivity, accessibility, commercialisation and performance. Note this is not an exhaustive list.

Intuitive design (or ease of use) - How easy is it to understand how to use the tool, without the help of third-party tutorials.
Expandability - How much work is required in order to change the default template (or default game) to something different.
Productivity - How long does it take to get from A to B in any particular task: map design, resource management, scripting, coding, etc, and what advanced tools are available to improve productivity, i.e. batch tasks or macros.
Accessibility - Does every option have a keybind or alternative way to use it, are the user inputs configurable. Can you tab through menus and confirm / cancel using space and escape?
Commercialisation - How easy is it to take 'your game', and turn it into a proper commercial product, including polish, options menus, data / error analysis etc.
Performance - How much has to go on on-screen or behind the scenes before the game performs sluggish, and most importantly, are there ways to identify performance hotspots?

Now I've described each of these areas, I'm going to give my view of where RPG Maker fits with them.

1. Intuitive Design. I'd give RPG Maker a 9/10 for intuitive design. The new versions, Ace & MV have a number of features that aren't very well explained however, such as luck or TP. What does luck mean exactly? It seems strange to me that the exact formula for combat isn't displayed anywhere. This is not a major issue however, and I consider RPG Maker the best in the business in terms of intuitive design.
2. Expandability. Thanks to the many plugins available, RPG Maker has always been decent at expandability in terms of plugins. However troops' battle events are rather limited in what conditions are available. In fact events are also limited in conditions and triggers; a feature that I'd expected to be expanded more over the years than it has. The fundamental issue with this is the fact that the interface for RPG Maker itself cannot be modified or added to (afaik). Comparing this with an engine like Unity, where you can write UI extensions, makes RPG Maker feel rather limited in this way.
3. Productivity. Getting started, like level design and resource management are top-notch, and you can whip up a prototype in a matter of minutes. However getting past the prototype phase is a bit more work, and this is where I feel RPG Maker is lacking a bit. Aspects like battle animations or event behaviour are often cumbersome to develop, because you end up building workarounds to the lack of UI options. When I'm working with events in MV, I find myself writing random javascript functions to avoid having to construct 10 or so conditional branches to achieve the effect I want. There are also very few batch tasks available, and macros are non-existent. RPG Maker also doesn't allow for hot-swapping, which has been common practice in the software industry for years (although strangely limited in game engines), but would be a massive time-saver if RPG Maker could do this. And I mean massive: just imagine being able to tweak event commands while the game is running and see the results the moment you click apply.
4. Accessibility. RPG Maker is inconsistent in terms of accessibility. Sometimes you can tab through options, sometimes you can't. Some buttons have keybinds, others don't. There are also no keybind/input settings for using the tool (correct me if I'm wrong). As an example, in MV try creating an event that sets switch 05 without touching your mouse. You can do everything using tab, enter & arrow keys except pick which switch you want to set.
5. Commercialisation. Out of the box, RPG Maker games do not provide keybind menus, although there may be plugins that enable this. If you wanted to include all of the number keys as a method of triggering abilities, or allow the player to configure their own quick-panel (like in Elder Scrolls for example), this gets more complicated, and in order to even interact with them you'd have to start writing script code everywhere. There also appears to be no method of data analysis, so that when the game crashes for some users that information is sent to the developer. In fact, RPG Maker is not at all robust when it comes to missing assets or errors in code. At the very least, the released version of the game should be able to continue running regardless of these minor issues.
6. Performance. I won't bash RPG Maker too much in this regard, since at least with MV, the game can run on a lot of different systems. However, I do feel that certain optimisations could be made regarding events, that it should allow the existence of a lot more of them before it performs sluggish (I have a few ideas for how to optimise them, with my programming background). There is also no feature to analyse hotspots in performance, i.e. if a particular method is being called thousands of times and is the main culprit for performance hits.

Overall I do find RPG Maker to be limited in a number of ways, or at least it can be a hassle sometimes. What's possible and what's reasonable are very different questions, and I find the latter to be just as pertinent. That doesn't mean RPG Maker is bad, I've discussed a lot of cons, but I haven't discussed any of its pros. But as far as answering the question 'is RPG Maker limited', I've given my answer.

 

[_Shadow_]

2] "The fundamental issue with this is the fact that the interface for RPG Maker itself cannot be modified or added to (afaik)."
You can customize the menus as much as you want on MV and you can check out Luna Engine on VX Ace.


3] "just imagine being able to tweak event commands while the game is running and see the results the moment you click apply."
Just imagine the bugs that can occur, especially when we talk about real time database access. I understand your thoughts, you are right but this is not a simple thing to implement I guess.

4] Consider suggesting this thing (if not already) to the forum about improvements. I like your point of view.

5] Not everyone wants such keybinding out of the box. Thus this can be included using a plugin I guess.
"At the very least, the released version of the game should be able to continue running regardless of these minor issues."
Well, look. I prefer the crashing against running without graphics. Because that way, I can detect where I was an idiot and fix my mistakes easier. It is annoying, but I find it helpful myself. Not to mention that this happens only if you delete already used assets, leaving references to it, that' your bad, or when you package a game that includes scripts that use specific assets and used the Remove unused assets on packaging. That can be solved with a dummy map with references to the missing assets and a rebuild of the game.

6] No argument here. The whole engine benefits from plugins that override some of its utility already.

I like your overall point of view. Now consider that this product targets PG13 ages too. It has to be simple, so we should keep that in mind. And i find your comparison to Unity flattering for what RPG Maker MV is. For real. If we are about to compare it to such an engine, well, I suppose it has done a pretty good job through the years. But no, it is not a 3D engine and can't beat unity to this. On the other hand, Unity isn't simple. It's far from it.

 

[Kes]

Please remember everyone that this is NOT a fansite but the official forum owned by the company distributing the RPG-Makers for computers.

Any mention of other engines could either be seen as wrong advertisement or bad-mouthing the competition and be followed by a lawsuit, so any mention of other companies is forbidden on this site. I am not suggesting that anyone has gone over the line on this yet (as far as I can see no one has), but I mention it now before it potentially happens, as another engine has already come up in the conversation.

Back to the question - one limitation (and it's a huge one) is how much people are prepared to pay to make their game. If you have a team of hundreds (or even tens) and a budget in the millions, then you can burst through almost any limitation. If, on the other hand, you only want to pay a modest amount for the engine, use as many free graphic, music and coding resources as possible, then your choices will be far more limited. You get what you are prepared to pay for.

 

[Kupotepo]

@Ameer, I am actually on the opposite problem. I will need to limit my scope and consolidate ideas.

Probably, put the inappropriate engines because it is an RPG maker. If someone wants to Visual novel then, then buy VN. It is specialized. If you want to make a strategy game, but some engine that specializes in a strategy game.

You do not need to know how to code JavaScript because there have been released plugins. It is already many things for you to already.

 

[Venima]

2] "The fundamental issue with this is the fact that the interface for RPG Maker itself cannot be modified or added to (afaik)."
You can customize the menus as much as you want on MV and you can check out Luna Engine on VX Ace.

You can? So if I wanted to add a new option in the actor page of the conditional branch UI, which allows you to pick 'Any actor' instead of picking a specific actor, I could do that in MV?

3] "just imagine being able to tweak event commands while the game is running and see the results the moment you click apply."
Just imagine the bugs that can occur, especially when we talk about real time database access. I understand your thoughts, you are right but this is not a simple thing to implement I guess.

Well I would add a check to the apply button if the game is running and overwrite data on apply, rather than the database being bombarded. I've had to write similar code myself on occasion. It could be something you enable in settings with a warning that admits it may do weird things in the playtest. The potential for weird things to happen is always the case with hotswapping, but it's infrequent enough that hotswapping is still highly valued. It certainly wouldn't be simple to implement, but in my experience it's really worth it. The difference between waiting 20 seconds vs 2 seconds whenever you tweak something is immense. Especially for scripting, since you only need to be missing a bracket somewhere in a plugin for the script not to load or blow up the game.

"At the very least, the released version of the game should be able to continue running regardless of these minor issues."
Well, look. I prefer the crashing against running without graphics. Because that way, I can detect where I was an idiot and fix my mistakes easier. It is annoying, but I find it helpful myself.

Perhaps then that could be something that you can enable or not in the Deployment UI?

 

[Sharm]

Why is thinking RPG Maker is limited automatically negative? Sure, there are some who present it that way, but let's be honest here, RPG Maker is limited. It's built for making RPGs, and there's nothing wrong with that. It's like pixel art, where the limitation is the strength, not a weakness. Sure, you can do basically anything with the right programmer on your team, but it wasn't made for other genres, and so that is limiting. That's actually a good thing. There are other tools better for other genres if that's the way you want to go. A general purpose engine adds complexity or difficulties that are easy to overcome or don't exist in something purpose made. Instead of fighting against proving that RM is equal to the big name general game engines, why not admit that it's not the same and that being different is perfectly okay. In my opinion, for making a traditional 2D JRPG there is no better tool. If that's not what you want to make, that doesn't mean that the engine isn't right for you but it does mean that the engine isn't made for your use. That's perfectly fine.

Honestly, it's not fair to redefine something into something it's not and then judge it by those rules. It's like saying not being to use your hands in soccer is limiting because you can't shoot the ball into a hoop. Let RPG Maker be an RPG Maker.

 

[Ameer]

@Sharm Actually saying that Rpg Maker is limited isn't bad. The bad thing is that people say it can only create bad games because that isn't true
@Kupotepo I totally agree with you but being able to code still helps for creating plugins that aren't already made for example few days ago I just finished a custom weapon upgrade system for my game
@Kuro DCupu For someone who already knows javascript can master Mv's engine in a month but it's still hard for someone who don't know javascript

 

[Saboera]

There is some limitations to the various RPG Maker, the older ones more so than MV. More often then not, I think when we say it's limited, we are referring to the basic product you get and in that case, I would agree.

You can often overcome those limitations or deal with them, but it's a question of how efficient or how much time you want to invest dealing with the quirks, coding or adding pluggins and digging poorly documented stuff vs just getting another engine or making your own. At some point RPG maker is just not worth it or becomes really frustrating to work with.

I like to push the tools I work with to see what they can do. At some point with RPG maker, what works in game doesn't work in the toolset.
One simple example: Pictures limit. You can easily change it by changing a number in the proper js file but the toolset won't support it, so anything beyond picture 100 has to be script called manually with the script command.
It's a decent engine but it does deserve criticism.

I wouldn't have an issue with price tiers for the engine in exchange for advanced features and flexibility.
In my opinion, the initial package without third party scripts could use a lot of improvements. Option menus, keybinds, proper mouse support, resolution options, sound sliders. There is a lot of basic modern technical features that are either lackluster or don't exist despite being standard inclusions for the past decade. The fact MV comes off with no way to quit the game via the main menu was just mind boggling to me.

Overall, I would also agree with pretty much everything Venima said.
Just lately I was horrified when it got updated to v1.6.2 only to find out they broke or removed the F9 functionality alongside other testing features which are the way we can properly debug stuff.

 

[VisitorsFromDreams]

Most people look at RPG Maker and think its limited because most games that people are exposed to that are made in the engine are kinda garbage. If every example you see made in the engine looks almost identical its not going to really inspire a lot of confidence from developers, particularly newer ones that dont know the engines history and how much good stuff has actually been made with it.

 

[Engr. Adiktuzmiko]

It is limited, by the limits of the engine and its scripting... BUT it is far more powerful that what most people think, and that is mainly because they dont really want to spend time to actually learn how to do things in it, especially not wanting to touch coding...

Another thing is because apparently, people want to use it for things it wasnt optimized for. Ofc you can do it especially on MV because its more open, but that means you need to make your own code for most of the stuff.. And again, upon hearing coding, people shy away...

Then these people begin comparing it to other engines out there which is kinda funny because in those engines you would need to either find a code/library or write your own just to make even basic stuff but on RM they dont even want to touch the code...

 

[_Shadow_]

"You can? So if I wanted to add a new option in the actor page of the conditional branch UI, which allows you to pick 'Any actor' instead of picking a specific actor, I could do that in MV?"

Oh. So you speak about the the UI of the Engine, not the UI of the end product, my bad; As far as I know, no you can't. Instead you can use plugin commands to do whatever you want. That is the workaround and I find no reason to call it limited if you can't do that. Since as a programmer you are willing to change the interface of a tool, you are already advanced enough to create plugin commands that can do your magic easier whatsoever. No matter what though, that stays as a fact. As far as I know, no you can't change the UI of RPG Maker. I still wonder why is that so important, that can call the engine limited.

On hotswapping I understand your considerations. I recommend you to bring this up to the appropriate thread, suggestions for improvement or something.

"Perhaps then that could be something that you can enable or not in the Deployment UI?"
You can also bring this up as a suggestion.

It is limited, by the limits of the engine and its scripting... BUT it is far more powerful that what most people think, and that is mainly because they dont really want to spend time to actually learn how to do things in it, especially not wanting to touch coding...

Another thing is because apparently, people want to use it for things it wasnt optimized for. Ofc you can do it especially on MV because its more open, but that means you need to make your own code for most of the stuff.. And again, upon hearing coding, people shy away...

Then these people begin comparing it to other engines out there which is kinda funny because in those engines you would need to either find a code/library or write your own just to make even basic stuff but on RM they dont even want to touch the code...

Actually this covers up the majority of people complaining about limitations.

Meanwhile @Venima you are not part of the majority, you truly feel yourself limited on that tool. I strongly recommend you once again to go to suggestions and bring these things up.

https://forums.rpgmakerweb.com/index.php?forums/editor-suggestions-and-improvement.168/

 

[Milennin]

You're implying everyone who uses RPG Maker MV has infinite knowledge on writing code and infinite time to write that code to customise their games to do whatever they want to stray from default systems.

But compared to RM2K3 it's got much more, yeah.

 

[Venima]

Oh. So you speak about the the UI of the Engine, not the UI of the end product, my bad; As far as I know, no you can't. Instead you can use plugin commands to do whatever you want. That is the workaround and I find no reason to call it limited if you can't do that. Since as a programmer you are willing to change the interface of a tool, you are already advanced enough to create plugin commands that can do your magic easier whatsoever.

The main limitation in the UI I find is the conditional branch. A large portion of the queries I want to make either require a dozen branches, or end up with train-lines of script code. I could write several dozen plugin methods just for all the different queries I want to make, but that can very quickly become messy. I'm not saying it isn't workable, just untidy.

It's also worth mentioning that I don't think you should be writing plugins for methods that you'll only be using once, and in that regard it's a little unfortunate that the event's script command only allows 8 lines of code. Beyond that you have to redefine vars, since they're forgotten between each block.