194
votes
Accepted
How do I get players to say "no" when they are afraid of missing out on sidequests or XP?
That is a common concept in nearly all existing videogames: you either say yes to accept a new quest or no to not take it. Players get used to this pattern by encountering it over and over, and ...
- 2,043
134
votes
Accepted
Why do RPGs let you know how much XP you need to level up?
It's common for games to have multiple overlapping loops of gameplay and reward, hitting different frequencies and motivation types, so that we don't have all our eggs in one basket, motivationally ...
- 139k
129
votes
How do I get players to say "no" when they are afraid of missing out on sidequests or XP?
Change the options to Left-Right rather than Yes-No.
A Yes-No choice is an option. Add this extra bit in or ignore it. A Left-Right choice is a choice. You can have this or that, but not both.
So ...
- 1,229
118
votes
Will the inclusion of LGBT characters in my game detract from possible sales?
It's not as easy as saying: "Lesbian couple in the game = ± x% copies sold".
Just like with most things in game development, it's not the idea which matters, but the execution. When you write LGBT ...
- 123k
92
votes
Accepted
How do I discourage "loot from party members who are about to leave" behavior?
As Charanor and Philipp point out in other comments & answers, there is a school of thought in game design (called "Love the Player" in my studio) that says if the player wants to do something ...
- 139k
68
votes
Accepted
Will the inclusion of LGBT characters in my game detract from possible sales?
I come from a place in the Internet most people deem to be horrible in every single way. While I generally don't agree with most of the stuff said in that website, I can provide some insight on what ...
- 926
43
votes
How do I get players to say "no" when they are afraid of missing out on sidequests or XP?
A way to show which answer is the "right one" without taking away the choice, would be to weight the options through meta-information.
Instead of just showing one "yes" option and one "no" option you ...
- 531
40
votes
Will the inclusion of LGBT characters in my game detract from possible sales?
I have some numbers, though they're for a web game, which might not apply to your market.
Back in 2012, I wrote a game called Farm & Grow. It featured little people wandering around a farm and ...
- 1,114
38
votes
How to calculate player damage in a game
It appears that you came up with an array of stats first, and now try to figure out what those stats could be doing.
I think you might be approaching this problem from the wrong direction.
The way I ...
- 123k
30
votes
Will the inclusion of LGBT characters in my game detract from possible sales?
There's no such thing as bad PR. While not universally true, it certainly does apply to indy games with a rather low projected number of sales. This kind of controversy is the best thing that could ...
- 9,945
29
votes
How do I discourage "loot from party members who are about to leave" behavior?
There are multiple design constraints, each of which can be solved independently. It's up to you to decide how to solve each one, in a way that makes sense for your game.
[I want to discourage] meta-...
- 14.9k
25
votes
Accepted
How can I prevent/balance waiting and turtling as a response to cooldown mechanics
The reason turtling is attractive in this case is because there's no or little incentive to do anything risky during the character's downtime. It's not risk-reward, it's wait-reward. To counter this, ...
- 366
23
votes
Will the inclusion of LGBT characters in my game detract from possible sales?
Games sell because they're good, not because they have X or Y
Your game sales will most likely have nothing to do with the sexual orientation of your characters. What will matter to the players is ...
- 3,126
23
votes
Why do RPGs let you know how much XP you need to level up?
It's a matter of motivating the player.
The player has an achievable goal to work towards
The player sees how far away from the goal they are
The player sees how playing the game visibly progresses ...
- 123k
22
votes
How do I get players to say "no" when they are afraid of missing out on sidequests or XP?
I love these because there's always a multitude of ways to do this.
The first thing that comes to mind is to not make it such a blind choice. If it is a decision that has the potential to ruin a ...
- 321
21
votes
Accepted
How to avoid cycles when one character stat can be enhanced by another?
One solution can be to differ between the immutable base value of a stat and the modifiable modified value of a stat. That way you can have cyclic dependencies when those dependencies are on the base ...
- 123k
20
votes
Accepted
How to design a damage formula in an RPG which keeps weapons with different attack speeds balanced?
The problems you have with calculating DPS from that formula are because what you call BaseDamage doesn't actually seem to be that.
Assuming that all numbers are ...
- 123k
19
votes
How do I discourage "loot from party members who are about to leave" behavior?
This behavior is completely understandable. After all, nobody wants to lose an irreplaceable item forever because they made the mistake of having it on the wrong character at the wrong time.
There ...
- 123k
17
votes
How do I use elementals to deepen jRPG combat strategy?
Elemental resistances usually create strategic depth but not tactical depth. Strategic depth means that they affect which characters are good in combat and which are bad.
Let's take Pokemon, for ...
- 123k
16
votes
Accepted
What kinds of conflict-resolution can be fun beyond combat in an RPG?
Why don't we constantly steal and murder in the real world?
We have empathy with other people and don't want them to feel bad.
We are afraid of getting caught and punished.
Why do games often fail to ...
- 123k
14
votes
How to create a non-inflationary player progress system (RPG)?
However, at some point you want to revisit one of the first places just to chill there .. and all the enemies are just .. meh. Of course, that's how it is, but in my opinion not how it should be
There'...
- 9,059
12
votes
Accepted
Adapting pen & paper RPG rule system for use in a video game
Generally, when you start without experience you should go with the existing solution instead of inventing something new.
However, your situation is different. Neither FATE nor GURPS are frameworks ...
- 9,945
12
votes
Why do RPGs let you know how much XP you need to level up?
Think about what would happen if level up happened randomly. You have a party of three players. At the beginning, all are the same level (for simplicity, 1). After playing around one levels and two ...
- 221
12
votes
How to avoid cycles when one character stat can be enhanced by another?
This isn't just a problem for video games; this can happen in board games too! So forget implementation details like hash sets for now. Your first problem is determining what the result you want will ...
- 580
11
votes
How do I get players to say "no" when they are afraid of missing out on sidequests or XP?
I find your argument for the Option-less version very compelling, but lacks the insight, why a player would choose the easier option.
As your play tester stated, they feared they might miss on ...
- 1,332
11
votes
How do I get players to say "no" when they are afraid of missing out on sidequests or XP?
Answered per @trlkly's comment suggestion:
You are presenting a "yes vs no" dichotomy to your players. A lot of the time, this is fine; players regularly run into scenarios where they have to make a ...
- 220
11
votes
Accepted
Should items in an RPG be hardcoded or loaded in some other way?
Weapons are data. You shouldn't really ever keep data hardcoded. Your structs / classes should accommodate all necessary parameters to build a weapon's data from scratch, e.g.:
...
- 30.4k
11
votes
Why do RPGs let you know how much XP you need to level up?
The short answer: psychology.
The long answer:
We humans are driven by the expectation of a reward, just like a dog. Knowing how much experience you have reached and how much is still needed for ...
11
votes
Way to mechanically justify not allowing players to just fly from location to location when playing as a winged insect
Birds
Real insects that fly too high / too far from the grass expose themselves to predators. You can make predation by birds be a risk during extended flight, without making it a hard wall - a gamble ...
- 139k
11
votes
Accepted
RPG - How to deal with the collision of a sprite with a side-view thinner than its front-view?
When you implement characters with weird traits, then it is generally a good idea to not try to glance over their weirdness, but to lean into it and make it a part of their game mechanics.
So let's ...
- 123k
Only top scored, non community-wiki answers of a minimum length are eligible
