jack1974 wrote:If you followed the discussion in SOTW forums you already know a bit what is going to happen in future. In practice depending how SOTW will perform, I'll decide if in future I'll do more games like it, or go back to more VN/RPG (where the VN part is much bigger) like Loren. As I said several times SOTW was an experiment, it made no sense for me to make another game like Loren since there is ALREADY Loren 2-3 planned

So I wanted to try to make something different, and anyone who has played both Loren and SOTW knows how different they are (gameplay wise).
Always worth experimenting, otherwise your games would all end up being the same. I completely avoid anything mentioning RPGMaker because they all pretty much look and feel and play pretty much the same, and it's nice to try something different.
However I also noticed that probably making games "so big" could be counter-productive for me. This is just an impression I have right now. In any RPG, battles tend to become repetitive. No matter what RPG it is. With real-time RPGs is less evident, but with turn based... yes. Even masterpieces like Fallout became repetitive in a while.
I certainly noticed this (as you know!). It's not even limited to computer games; happens on tabletop games as well.
I think there are a few parts to the problem:
- Combat for the sake of combat. There's a desire to toss in fights to let the party level up or show that there are evil creatures in the world or demonstrate waves of guards around the general. However, I'm not sure it's necessary to actually include every fight in a game, especially not if it is a VN/RPG hybrid. You can ditch random encounters entirely and use prose to dispatch waves of faceless guards, letting the battles the player fights be the truly unique and interesting encounters. And you can even tweak the battle parameters to match the prose. Why make the player fight seven waves of guards before the boss commander when you can just skip to the boss fight and demonstrate fatigue by starting the party wounded with half-stamina?
- Combat is encouraged. Even when alternatives are available, you usually get more EXP for choosing to fight and beating the bad guys. The minotaur quest is an example - you get the quest reward either way, but actually killing the minotaur gives bonus experience and potentially bonus items. Thus, some players feel like they're forced to grind every fight.
- Combat is usually to the death. The kill mechanic also encourages this, because you get more EXP for actually killing enemies. But really, if I down the Bandit Leader, my party is all alive, and only three wounded bandits remain, why don't they just flee? If I squash the Alpha Wolf, are the others really going to fight on to the death, wounded and outnumbered? Most of the time, there is a tipping point where the victor is determined midway through the fight, and then the last bit becomes waiting for enough turns to grind down your enemies (and/or restoring your HP/mana for the next fight). Once I'm guaranteed to win, why force me to go through another 120 turns of auto-attack to prove it?
Then a few weeks ago while waiting for assets for SOTW, and to relax a bit, I played Banner Saga and it somehow opened my mind. You don't need to have 8+ characters with 15 skills each. You don't need to have a LOOOOOOONG game with 250+ battles, 100+ enemies, etc. The game CAN be fun by reducing the options carefully. Balancing becomes much easier, since you don't need to consider a crazy amount of skills or enemies. Etc etc.
I also think fewer skills, fewer battles, fewer enemies...but all of them more unique and interesting would be better.
1) reuse the same engine with MINIMUM CHANGES and do another game with a different story/setting (see Spiderweb, Amaranth, Aldorlea = they make 10 games reusing same engine, aren't crazy like me to make a new one for every game!!)
I think this would be a mistake. As alluded to above, I played one Spiderweb game, tried a second and found it too similar to the first that I dropped it and went looking for someone else. You don't have to remake the engine each time, I think the SotW engine does pretty well. But there are definite improvements over the Loren engine, and some things you could experiment/improve upon in a future game. Maybe just limit yourself to a certain number of engine changes per game and stick with it so you don't go too overboard, but evolve the engine slowly.
Sid Meier's rule of thumb for Civilization is 1/3rd the same, 1/3rd refinements on the previous version, and 1/3rd new. That ratio might not work exactly when it's only you doing all the work, but the general idea I think is sound.
(Psst...the resistance system badly needs help!)
2) try some smaller games, with an according lower price (not everyone wants to play an epic journey of 50h!). Smaller also means that you don't necessarily need to do 6 x 6 battles. It depends on tastes but I think SOTW Act1 battles, with only 3 party members, were very fun, sometimes more than latter ones
Smaller games also let you experiment more with those crazy engine ideas.
I didn't enjoy the Act 1 battles so much (though it probably depends on the classes you pick). Actually, Act 1 had the most repetitive battles, because you couldn't do a whole lot with a small party, though that could be just because of how SotW was set up. But it doesn't have to be 6x6. 4 might work pretty well. Plus, battles should go faster if they're 4x4 instead of 6x6.
3) try to make a RPG/roguelike without plot. This would save a lot of time since I wouldn't need to hire writer, follow a story, etc. It would also be something different and fun for me to try
Hmm...the most appealing parts of your games are usually the plot. Would have to see...
Loren 2-3 will still be made of course, and 99% will be like the first one: battles, but mostly story. Roger Steel is still in early stages so can't say much about it, PS2 same but we had different plans (engine) for it. The next ones, depends. If SOTW will sell 1 million copies (lol no way) then of course I'm not crazy, it means people want such a long and complex game and I'll do another one like it. But if only sells just like Loren, which is a good result, but won't be really worth all the time I spent on it, since in the same time I could probably have made 3-4 other games

Or even 2 "normal" RPGs.
I love doing RPGs but I have a life too!

I wonder if you had broken SotW into two. With a bit of reworking the story, you could've done something like Acts 1, 2, and 4 as one game and then Act 3 + some new stuff as an expansion (if Act 3 was rewritten to come after 4), and it might've been easier to make. Given the lengths of the acts, 1 + 2 + 4 would make a decent length for a game.
I mentioned in the other thread, but I am kind of worried about Loren 2. There are so many characters and combinations that it sounds five times more complex to make than SotW.