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My friend and I have looooong boring nights off, and are considering designing a game for the hell of it.

We have great ideas, but neither of us are programmers, and have no desire to be. So our best bet would be an RPG Maker program.

Specifically, I am interested in RPG Maker II for PS2 or maybe just RPG Maker for PSX.

Those that have tried it, what do you all think of these? I hear they have a high learning curve and are impossible to really use without the guide book, and I have a feeling it won't be worth the investment, but who knows?

This post has been edited by sharkerbob on 27th March 2005 08:31

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And behold, I saw a Pale Gaming System, and the name of he who rode it was Squaresoft, and Enix followed him.

I haven't tried either of those, but I know that a good bet would be RPG maker 2000/2003/xp (pc) are good bets and are free and has the biggest community dedicated to things of that type around, with many great games produced by them (most notably laxius power trilogy, legion saga series, A Blurred Line, the list goes on...). I must post a disclaimer though that they are all translated illegally into english, and so must be at your own risk. to avoid getting warned I also won't post any websites relating to it (although I will take it to PMs if desired). Hope this helps.

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"Fire and steel
follow me through the lands
you will burn hordes of hell
in the deadly raging flames of revenge"

Rhapsody - Flames of Revenge

RPG Maker II is way too confusing to make an RPG but it comes with a nice pre-set RPG already made and ready to play. If you can go through boring menu picking out SFX, etc. go ahead. I'm about ready to return my version since the only thing I'm doing is playing the RPG that's already there. It actually sucks though, it had Dragon Warrior VII graphics.

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Yunalesca: "Hope is...comforting. It allows us to accept fate, however tragic it might be. "

Yunalesca: "Poor creature. You would throw away hope. Well... I will free you before you can drown in your sorrow. It is better for you to die in hope than to live in despair. Let me be your liberator. "

Hmm... RPG maker...that reminds me of the old (meaning: original) "Bard's tale"... one of the parts came with a creator program to make your own adventures sweet.

Sorry if that was a ad off-topic.

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"I fell off the mountain of words at around the 10,000ft mark. Tell my family...they owe me money." -Narratorway

"If you retort against this, so help me God I'll shove any part of your anatomy I can find into some other part. Figuratively, of course." - Josh

"We have more, can deliver tuesday." - Del S

Good old CoN

It takes dedication actually. I tried 3x with the PC ones, and failed miserably. I never got to dialogue, as the maps, sprites, and data was too mundane for me to finish. Last time I checked (2003), a good 3/4 of announced projects were in-progress the whole year, I think carried from 2002 as well. Don't quote me on it though, but my point is that it takes a great deal of patience, not just ideas, to make an RPG..

I've seen the PSX RPGMaker and I have to say, trust me, learning how to acheive basic programming and game developement is FAR easier than struggling through that unintuitive, slow mess.

I've always strongly opposed RPGMaker because they breed laziness. Why go further if you already have a tool that allows you to make 2D RPGs without putting any effort other than just getting your idea out there? You accept the engine's limitations and never acheive anything special with it short of yet-another-cookie-cutter-rpgmaker-game. And further, people feel discouraged when (if) they try to move forward because "programming is so much more difficult" (which it isn't; I do believe at this point I have the authority to state so )

If you want to break free of the RPGMaker mold and do your idea justice, you might want to start looking at http://www.gamedev.net for some ideas. Their message board is VERY good and the people VERY friendly; you can usually expect a detailled answer that'll solve your problem within less than an hour if your post covers all the details needed to know to answer your question.

Now you'll need some tools...

http://msdn.microsoft.com/library is going to be something you'll visit VERY often when you start learning the Win32 API (I'm assuming you have Windows and not Lunix or some other weird non-mainstream OS )

http://www.bloodshed.net is the place to go if you don't feel like shelling out massive cash for Visual C++. Their C++ compiler is about as popular as Microsoft's, making them a very solid freeware alternative.

http://www.microsoft.com is well-known to all of us, and definitely an important place to stop by. Hunt around, I believe they have a FREE compiler for Visual Basic .net, which is far easier to learn than C++ if you're new to the scene. You can also pick up the DirectX SDK, which is like a little toolkit you can use to incorporate multimedia into your game (music, sound, graphics...) without having to write the whole engine yourself.

If you fancy OpenGL more, you'll have a set of graphic tools FAR easier to use than DirectX's, but nothing for music/sound/netplay/whatnot. You'll have to incorporate some DirectX for that or look for an alternative library. OpenAL is something you could hunt around for for music and sound. http://www.rush3d.org (IIRC) is the place to go for OpenGL tutorials and code. http://nehe.gamedev.net (again, IIRC) has THE best tutorials you can find to learn this stuff.



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"Judge not a man by his thoughts and words, but by
the quality and quantity of liquor in his possession
and the likelyhood of him sharing."

hmmm.... thanks for the links folks, I'll look into it.

But I'm not sure how much dedication will actually go into it... we are simply doing this to have something, anything else to do from 2 to 6 AM. And we won't probably do anything more than a few simple "sidequest-type" adventures... nothing too grandoise. I can't even get around to simply writing stories about most of my "grand ideas", I know won't be able to do a serious, long RPG.

I mean, hell, if need be, we can always do a pen and paper version.

Thanks for the opinions, I'll run it by the friend, and look into the alternatives.

This post has been edited by sharkerbob on 27th March 2005 17:51

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And behold, I saw a Pale Gaming System, and the name of he who rode it was Squaresoft, and Enix followed him.

I have a good amount of experience with the RPG Maker II for PS2. Yes, it is complicated, but it still is possible to make games on it. You just have to spend a lot of time with it, be very patient, and use a lot of trial and error. It also helps to have the strategy guide. So far for my game I have completed a town and a scene that occurs inside the bar in the town. I haven't done much else because I'm having a block on what to do next with the story, but if you spend enough time fiddling around with RPG Maker II, you can actually create something.

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Elena Indurain

Currently Playing: Suikoden II

I personally have RPG Maker 2003, and I'll say right now that it's pretty limited. Whlie I didn't actually do anything with it, i realized that it is pretty darn limiting. The most unique thing I've seen done for it is a Metroid fan-project done by Houston of Metroid2002 (www.metroid2002.com), and it's supposed to be a kind of silly adventure that pays respect to Metroid characteristics but also pokes fun at a lot of things. In case you want to find out about it, it's called Houston's Big Adventure, and if you're wondering what it plays like, there's a video of the beginning of the game, played by Houston himself as a demo. (I have the video if you want to see it; PM me for more details.)

One major limitation of RPG Maker, in my opinion, is that it can only use MIDI files as sound files. I don't know of a way to get it to use SPCs, GSFs, PSFs, etc..., and that presents looping difficulties in producing a truly professional-like product.

For those of you who want to use any edition of RPG Maker as an RPG-making tool, I suggest you DON'T touch RPG Maker until you already have a good, solid idea, WITH approximate plans (like maps, at least), for your game. Otherwise, it's all too easy to get distracted by all the kewl feetures, and kinda just get stuck in the middle of development.

I'm personally not using RPG Maker, partly because of my music complaint, partly because I want a Chrono-Trigger-like battle system, partly because I don't believe the map components they have will work for my purposes. I'm so far planning it out all on paper, on my computer (in the form of text files, Excel worksheets, and Word documents), and in my head, and I would basically need someone else to program it for me when I'm done. (But I can imagine the satisfaction of facing a group of programmers from some small company, and having them ask me what kind of ideas I have so far, and setting a huge stack of paper upon the table, and saying "Those are the essentially-complete plans.")

Designing and RPG is a long and difficult process, which I've decided to undertake because (1) I was already quite far into it by the time I reailzed this, (2) I like it too much, and (3) I have personal and political reasons for making my game. Keep in mind that it'll take you a while, even if you work with other people on it. Squaresoft's Final Fantasy I was released in 1987, and since then, only 19 more FF games have come out, plus 2 Seiken Densetsu, 2 Chrono, and a few other games. Contrast that with Capcom's Mega Man series alone (I'm not even considering the entire company), whose first release was also in 1987, but which has so far seen at least 45 distinct titles, plus remakes, and ports of games to other systems.

Also keep in mind that if you design an RPG, you'll have to do both the cool stuff about the game as well as the not-so-cool stuff about it. You'll have to design characters' personalities, write a story, come up with sidequests, and pick music, but you'll also have to design stat-increase algorithms, lower-level (read: non-impressive) magic spells, the bestiary (including the weakest, most insignificant enemies), and dialogue for each and every NPC. (No, unless you're making a joke RPG, they can't all say "Welcome to Corneria.")

The way I'm designing my RPG is actually putting it on the back burner. I mess with it when I'm bored. I may get an inspiration for something at some random time, and I may toss it around my brain for a while. But it's actually one of the few things that I've decided to leave alone and let my love for doing it drive me (I SO hope that would work for my schoolwork).

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Check the "What games are you playing at the moment?" thread for updates on what I've been playing.

You can find me on the Fediverse! I use Mastodon, where I am @[email protected] ( https://sakurajima.moe/@glennmagusharvey )

While there is a ton of good advice in GMH's post (turns out I'm accidentally doing certain things a lot like he is), I honestly don't see why it would be so important to pick music tracks for your RPG rather than holding off on the sound department. I understand that it's a key part of actually designing an RPG, but a great original score is almost absolutely necessary for a great RPG. I don't success trying to compose your own original score (the closest thing I've done to an original score is arranging music for my chamber group in high school), but it might be somewhat pointless to set up a soundtrack right now, unless it's going to be low-budget project for sure. I plan on using my connections with the computer science department here (I'm no compsci major, but I have many friends with similar aspirations as I do and game and graphics design is actually the strongest computer science division at UVA) to propose my game ideas (hopefully by then I'll have others working with me on the project) and get some semblance of an RPG set up.

Edit

It might be a good idea to just describe the mood for certain character themes/scenes if there is a possibility that there will eventually be an original score for the game

Also another thing important to consider is minigames. Those might go under the heading of "sidequests," but certain things like Spheda, Blitzball, and chocobo racing are all vitally important parts of their respective excellent RPGs. Right now I'm designing a card game for my RPG, but right now that project is secondary to spell mechanics and map design.

This post has been edited by laszlow on 27th March 2005 20:23

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this is a blog mostly about comics and videogames
END SPOILER

Contrary to laslow's suggestion, I see nothing wrong with trying first to complete an original music score. I often find that the proper music can inspire certain aspects of my story. I often hear songs (sure not originals) that I actually think to myself would fit great if such and such happened. But I will be the first to confess that my brain works in a huge different way than others, so it could just be me.

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Elena Indurain

Currently Playing: Suikoden II

If you want to do a Pen and Paper version, Or are just looking to design a system of combat, I made a P&P before, and it wasn't exactly anything as easy as you might think. A working combat system is difficult to come up with. But since I've battle tested mine on a multitude of quests, I can say I have some experience in the way to design it, so it works well and keeps inflation down. I dunno what help I can be, but if there's anything you might think I know based on that- Ask

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If you've been mod-o-fied,
It's an illusion, and you're in-between.
Don't you be tarot-fied,
It's just alot of nothing, so what can it mean?
~Frank Zappa

Sins exist only for people who are on the Way or approaching the Way

The most difficult, and arguably important, part of an RPG is its game mechanics. This is also one of the reasons why I feel RPGMaker games are nothing too special: having a fixed engine that cannot be altered, there is very little they can bring in this field. While it's possible to completely recreate a new game engine solely through events, it's nearly impossible to make it work properly and the effort is too vast to consider.

An often overlooked thing is the way stats work. Having attack and defense alone is good, but very bland and ultimately boring. You might throw in additional stats for magic (magic attack and magic defense) and speed to spice things up. This, too, remains boring because stats are still too straightforward. Equip 'x', your attack goes up. Equip 'y', your defense goes up but your magic defense goes down. The variety is quite slim and limited to plus/minus effects. Then you need to consider the scale on which things occure: if one extra point in "attack" increases damage by 15 points and you gain 2-4 per level, you'll go from say, 60 damage to about 100 after a level up: quite an improvement! But if you're doing 2500 damage and do 2545 after working a half hour gaining a level, well, what's the point? Common pitfall.

The magic/ability system is probably the biggest part of a game. You could have the standard fight/magic/item selection, but that leaves very little room for differences between your characters short of stats and usable spells. You could toss in unique abilities (say, steal), and you'd be on the right track. Many games, however, allow you to customize your character's skills (think Tactics or FFX). Just giving your character one ability throughout the whole game makes them boring and gives little to build on throughout the game. You have your best and only ability right away: the character is complete and only needs to raise their stats. Boring...

Right there, with these two things, your game can take a near-infinit number of dimensions. Imagine FF4 with a job-point based system? Or Tactics where your abilities must be "drawn" from other enemies or learned solely by having someone cast them on you? The game starts taking a whole new turn.

What about money? Many games let you gain money just by killing stuff. Nothing wrong AT ALL with that, but some of the more anal players will complain that it isn't realistic. You could try to give your characters jobs à-la FF8 (ie, SeeD paychecks) but this is easily abusable. Having enemy parts being worth money à-la MMORPG (ie, wolf fangs go for 15 gold apiece on the market) is another option, but are you willing to create many, many near-useless items solely so the player can sell them for money?

Then comes equipment. The usual formula of slapping an item in a slot works great, though you can vary things a bit here too. FF8, for instance, had items "evolve" by being upgraded through other items. This, unfortunately, defeats the thrill of finding new equipment in dungeons (notice how you barely ever found items in FF8). You could have equipment evolve with use and have the best of both worlds (think Vagrant Story) but this means quite a lot of work in item management (every item is unique and must carry a number of stats with it).

How is the party managed? Party size comes to mind, but who can and can't be in it is another thing to consider. Can you swap out the main character or is he/she stuck there for storyline purposes? Do you have to meet your characters at a central "hangout" type place to swap them in/out or is there a "magical" change-at-anytime system like FF7's PHS? Will scenes that require a character to be present force them in the party or require the party to go back and get the character in order to progress (such as the imperial base scene that required Terra before the cave to the sealed gate in FF6.)

How will travel in general work? Having ships or other forms of transport to move from town to town is great but tedious after a while and useless once the party acquires an airship of sorts. Having an actual world map you can explore is much nicer than just picking locations to go to, and opens up the possibility of having many hidden areas, but requires a bit more management (ie, preventing the party from going to some dungeon or town they aren't supposed to yet) and is harder to do (given the map's size.)

The storyline is a vital step; that goes without saying. But you shouldn't forget people will be playing this to do more than just see your story unfold; this IS a game, after all. Your game will be boring and will have no replay value if there's nothing to build up and max out. Look at how hard people work to get every blue magic spell or whatnot in RPGs: while the first run will allow the player to appreciate the storyline, your RPG will die if the second or third runs are the same thing and with nothing special worth accomplishing.

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"Judge not a man by his thoughts and words, but by
the quality and quantity of liquor in his possession
and the likelyhood of him sharing."

Storyline isn't neccesary for what he's making I think. Just seems like he wants to do the occasional sidequest every now and then.

But yeah, Silverlance makes some valid points about mechanics. And I can vouch for it, that they are in no way easy to come up with. For each thing you do, 100 little things have to be done. Like for instance, Lets say I make a barbarian class- Simple enough? Now what skills does he get? How does he learn those? How long should it take him to get them? How is that useful? Is that too stacked and will it make the game too easy?

Ect ect.

Just from the way it looks like you want to do this, it's gonna have to be pen and paper.

Which also brings in the need to have more players. Can you draw a big enough crowd? How do you do it, ect.

Edit

Edit:Sidenote-I know because myself and a friend got the idea that we could make a kick ass P&P after watching RoTK in theatres. In essence, you end up biting off more than you can chew, and I guess my point is, a simple idea turns into something huge rather quickly, and despite my efforts not to, I ended up putting alot of time into mine, which is yet nowhere near 100% mechanics wise and game wise. Keep in mind I saw RoTK on opening day, so you can see how long I've been working at this. I have a playable beta, but it's still not anywhere near perfect or complete by any means.

This post has been edited by MogMaster on 28th March 2005 03:31

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If you've been mod-o-fied,
It's an illusion, and you're in-between.
Don't you be tarot-fied,
It's just alot of nothing, so what can it mean?
~Frank Zappa

Sins exist only for people who are on the Way or approaching the Way

Having had an interest in game developement since age ~4-5, I can vouch for the difficulty of such a project and the immense rammifications that ensue from what can sound like a simple idea. Trust me, I've started a lot of projects when I was a kid.

Mechanics apply even to none-RPG games. I had a kick-ass idea for a game which, in the end, never quite got completed, about 5 years ago back when I was still learning. The game was a side-scroller and the intention was to have a unique game system that goes beyond the simple "press A to slash and B to jump" system sidescrollers had at the time. The idea (to have what I can only describe now as a DDR-on-keyboard type of system to simulate a swordfight) seemed so simple at first, but when I got around to actually implanting it, many insane sub-problems crept up in the actual system. For the sake of shameless self-gratification, here are two screenshots that have endured for many years. (Edit: Yes, that's a catgirl; sprited entirely by yours truly. The rest has been ripped from Actraiser and some other game I forgot.)

http://www.geocities.com/RuneLancer/junk/katspaw1.txt
http://www.geocities.com/RuneLancer/junk/katspaw2.txt

If I may related my most important game developement experience, it would have to be my current project, Endless Saga. The storyline and game concepts, I've been thinking of and developping for nearly 3 years (!!) When I started, it was just going to be a self-described lame RPG with no plot as such. Just because I wanted to program an RPG (it's the 'in' thing apparently ) The storyline was rapidly scrapped in favor of very good ideas I was getting which, I felt, could be used to make an insanely good game. The game expanded considerably and after half a year, the original project was permanently scrapped (the game engine was practically complete, too! The first dungeon was playable, albeit it had a few minor bugs.)

Having spent all of my spare time developping games as a hobby, I know what to expect for a project like this, and am thinking of this in terms of years, not a few quick late-night coding sessions. I am also prepared to accept that I'll just plain need breaks when IRL issues make it impossible to find any spare time (currently, the project is paused until april 1st.)

I can say this: even a small project, when it comes to making games, will take a lot of involvement. My lamest, smallest game was a space-invaders clone with a twist (felt more like a side-scrolling shoot-em-up with multiple weapons and enemies) The design was ridiculously simple, there was no music/sound, and the sprites were all ripped. Took 3 weeks to code, and it sucks. And VERY little code was not DIRECTLY related to the game's implementation, so it wasn't a matter of "programming is harder than using a premade engine." Arguably, I took only about 4-5 days of actual programming time to make the game, and the rest was other stuff like college and relaxing.

Basically, expect a lot of effort. Even if you expect this to be a small project.

This post has been edited by Silverlance on 28th March 2005 04:46

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"Judge not a man by his thoughts and words, but by
the quality and quantity of liquor in his possession
and the likelyhood of him sharing."

Quote (Silverlance @ 27th March 2005 22:05)

c. You could have the standard fight/magic/item selection, but that leaves very little room for differences between your characters short of stats and usable spells. You could toss in unique abilities (say, steal), and you'd be on the right track. Many games, however, allow you to customize your character's skills (think Tactics or FFX). Just giving your character one ability throughout the whole game makes them boring and gives little to build on throughout the game. You have your best and only ability right away: the character is complete and only needs to raise their stats. Boring...

I agreed with the vast majority of your post except for the second half of that paragraph. You're assuming that ability systems like Tactics or FF X are inherently better than heterogenous characters with unique abilities like FF IV, FF VI, or Chrono Trigger. A well-designed ability system does not require complete character customization to make it interesting; choosing which characters to use and finding the way to best implement characters' abilities requires more battle strategy than painstakingly designing each character to your prefereces and winning every battle doing the same thing(s). Most of the points you raise are important ones, but you seem to imply that the best way to go about designing a game engine is to do it your way. No.

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this is a blog mostly about comics and videogames
END SPOILER

Hmm, you're reading a lot more into that post than it was saying. I'm not assuming anything, but making a statement on behalf of game design oriented towards replayability through customization and/or accumulation (Lores, Rages, mastering jobs, filling up the grid sphere, whatnot...)

Which, I'd like to mention, is the kind of game CT is You have to "buy" those abilities and equip special items (in some cases) or have specific character configurations. Likewise with FF6, where you need to take sidequests or do a lot of hunting about to find special abilities (Lores, Dances, Rages, even Blitzes), or equip certain espers to learn spells (with two exceptions.) Even FF4 has you taking side-quests to build up your repertoire of available abilities and spells: many summons require a side-quest, for instance.

I could rephrase that bit in the form of, "characters that cannot progress skill-wise throughout the game and come in your party pre-packaged and fully maxed out (again, skill-wise) offer far fewer possibilities than characters that require you to perform some task to expand the options open to them." Granted, to mark a game off as boring because your thief won't learn any new abilities or spells, or your fighter won't ever do anything but fight, or your mage can only cast four types of spells, is pretty close-minded and frankly wrong. But it cannot begin to compare to a game where your fighter learns various sword skills, your thief can learn to throw items or use various forms of poisons for special effects, and your mage can discover new spells.

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"Judge not a man by his thoughts and words, but by
the quality and quantity of liquor in his possession
and the likelyhood of him sharing."

My first RPG creating experience came from QBasic 3 years back when I was in grade 10. Teacher didn't teach enough to allow me to create that great a game, so learning a lot of stuff on my own took a lot of time. Understanding all the code, making an ATB battle system in QBasic took a lot of patience and time. I worked on it for about 2 hours a day, for about 5 months. And, after all that time I had a two party team, that could walk around on a total of 4 ASCII art maps. They could fight enemies, level, get new equipment and interact somewhat. Many of my friends found it could occupy them for about 30 minutes before it was just endless leveling. Somewhat discouraging that all that effort got me 30 minutes of enjoyment.

Then I happened upon RPGMaker2000 which, to me anyway, seemed like a great way to get some experience. I found it easy to understand because I had some background knowledge because of QBasic and C++. As I started making my game, I was just using sprites, music, and other graphics that came with the game. There was nothing really special about my game. But, once I started looking through help files, checking out stuff on the Internet, it's amazing to learn what you are capable of doing with this program. On own site, I downloaded Chess that someone made with RPGMaker2000 and it was quite impressive. Eventually I made events that simulated riding a chocobo (graphic included), using a tent, custom name functions (A LOT of patience), party switching - loops and if statements like theres no tomorrow. The program enabled me to make my ideas visual and that was enough to satisfy me. Although I haven't finished the game (college ugh), I found I could spend about 8 straight hours in front of the screen just playing around.

Now I hope as I'm almost done first year programming that I'll get into something better than RPGMaker2000. .Net programming, C#... My dreams will be realized! (I hope).

As a note, RPGMaker2003 isn't all that great. Making sprites for battle is very time consuming and there aren't that many you can just download from the net.

Pen and Paper I found was very hard to be original. Everything I thought I was making up would've been stolen from Dungeons and Dragons. So, I just play DnD with my programming teacher which to me is the pinicle of nerd.

Not sure if any of this is still valid to you but eh, figured I'd give my two cents nonetheless.

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This is my world: (Got my second chapter up, 3rd Chapter about 80% complete)
http://www3.sympatico.ca/daniel876/homepage.html

Thanks for the info guys, but again, we're going simple as it is. Probably nothing more than a hub town, a little bit of forest around it, and a single dungeon with an end boss. Maybe a few tiny side paths to get magic and fight a hidden boss.

Limits are somewhat welcome, as, if given a set amount of resources, we can figure out how best to make those resources work. An old school fighting system works just fine.

Either way, we're planning everything before dropping any money into the "project". Thanks again for the tips.

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And behold, I saw a Pale Gaming System, and the name of he who rode it was Squaresoft, and Enix followed him.

Quote (Silverlance @ 28th March 2005 00:47)

Hmm, you're reading a lot more into that post than it was saying. I'm not assuming anything, but making a statement on behalf of game design oriented towards replayability through customization and/or accumulation (Lores, Rages, mastering jobs, filling up the grid sphere, whatnot...)

Hmm... I guess I was reading with too much anger... my bad.

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this is a blog mostly about comics and videogames
END SPOILER

I have to agree with alphasmart because if you wanted to but your game on the net you could but with the ps versions I dont think you could. and this way on the net you could download more resources and stuff like that.

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Money is no good unspent.
There's a fine line between bravery and stupidity.

Quote (sharkerbob @ 28th March 2005 02:42)

Either way, we're planning everything before dropping any money into the "project".  Thanks again for the tips.

Well now. Considering all programming resources listed so far are free, as are a pen and paper, and (technically speaking) RM2k, whereas RPGMaker for the psx needs to be bought...

Edit: Or rented... either way someone has to shell out some greens.

This post has been edited by Silverlance on 29th March 2005 22:59

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"Judge not a man by his thoughts and words, but by
the quality and quantity of liquor in his possession
and the likelyhood of him sharing."

One other thing I've noticed is somewhat key to an RPG's basic equipment system is individuality and variety of equipment. Does each character have a unique weapon type? Can characters use common armors and accessories? How unique/unusual are said weapon types? Also, what kind of weapon styles do your characters use? Are your staff users shaolin monks or wussy mages? Decisions, decisions.

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this is a blog mostly about comics and videogames
END SPOILER

Unique equipment, in my personal opinion, sucks terribly.

Let's face it: this boils down to my earlier post about equipment and stat systems. "Hey, a Fireslinky! Zorkum can equip those, let's see... ah! It's better than his current pepperslinky! Let's equip it." No decision-making past the initial "are the numbers bigger?" decision: you zoom into the character's equip screen and check. At best you might have to take a few moments to consider wether the +5 bonus in attack is worth the -10 drop in magic.

And if you don't have Zorkum in your team? A disappointing find indeed: you can probably just ditch the slinky for a few gold pieces at the nearest shop and load up on healing potions or something.

Now, take a game where multiple characters can equip the same weapons, like Final Fantasy VI. Oh! Oh! Illumina! Am I going to give it to Terra and forego the use of spells in favor of attacking with a stronger weapon from now on, or will I let Edgar, whose magic is weaker, use it? That'd be great since I could keep using Terra for spells and not let my mega-sweet sword go to waste, but Edgar's tools ARE kinda useful... But the bonuses to magic it also gives could be beneficial to Terra, except I'd be casting spells more often with her anyways. Ooooh, decisions, decisions!

With just one piece of equipment per character, the item is wasted if you don't use that character, and your options are basically "use the stronger-than-my-old-equipment item, or don't." With varied equipment, chances are at least one person in your party will be able to make use of it, and then you can start planning on who'll use what. Especially if there are vast differences between the characters in your game and their in-battle strategies vary solidly from fight-fight-heal or spell-spell-ether. Your strategies can vary: can't beat the boss, but just found a very powerful sword that also gives you a high boost to magic? Maybe you should give it to your mage; the attack power will be wasted on them, but the boost to magic may give you the edge you need to beat the boss and its high physical defense.

And hey, let's friggin' face it: what kind of weapon's a megaphone, or a comb?

This post has been edited by Silverlance on 30th March 2005 03:07

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"Judge not a man by his thoughts and words, but by
the quality and quantity of liquor in his possession
and the likelyhood of him sharing."