194
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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 ...
- 2,023
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 ...
- 130k
130
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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 ...
- 1,231
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 ...
- 118k
93
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 ...
- 130k
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 ...
- 1,074
38
votes
Accepted
Character ability power balance
In any game where you have character leveling, you need to decide on a power curve.
This is a mathematical function which maps game progress to character strength. This curve can be linear, ...
- 118k
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 ...
- 118k
36
votes
Accepted
Simple Diminishing Return with Cap
You want to start with an asymptotic function. That is, one that starts at a number a and approaches another number b, but never ...
- 516
31
votes
Conveying a claustrophobic atmosphere in cavalier oblique projection
Reduce the players sight-range. You can do that by adding an overlay mask on top of the rendered scene. This simulates the reduced sight-radius of the player-characters due to darkness.
It forces the ...
- 118k
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 ...
- 9,955
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] ...
- 14.8k
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 ...
- 118k
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
20
votes
Conveying a claustrophobic atmosphere in cavalier oblique projection
Use per-tile lighting to do sight-range reduction.
Shadowlands (1992) - 3 light levels:
Diablo (1997) - 8 light levels:
You can do much more with this dynamic, such as easily having monsters only ...
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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 ...
- 118k
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 ...
- 118k
17
votes
Accepted
How do I create a simple RPG game server?
You're on the right track.
The gist of the client-server networking model is that a server is that it's a central point of knowledge that clients connect to. A game server typically contains
an in-...
17
votes
Accepted
RPG Formula - Attack and defense
When you want one hit with 200% attack to be exactly equal to 20 hits with 10% attack, then your only option is to make defense a percent value.
When the defender has 55% defense vs. physical damage,...
- 118k
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 ...
- 118k
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 ...
- 118k
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
...
- 9,019
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 ...
- 9,955
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
11
votes
Simple Diminishing Return with Cap
A good base would be a function like arctan, since it passes through the origin and exhibits a horizontal asymptote.
Scale it by ...
- 4,893
11
votes
Character ability power balance
@Philipp gave a great answer. Another concept to take into consideration is the idea of average threat level. It is perfectly acceptable for certain foes to have stats dramatically greater than what ...
- 211
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