Things you like to see

[Guardian]

This thread is fairly simple - talk about things in RM games that you liked. Was there anything about a particular game you liked? Maybe the battle system was good? Or were battles balanced perfectly? If you've ever played an RM game that made you say to yourself, "I really enjoyed this," this thread is for discussing the why. I'll ask that you provide links if you can find/remember them. They don't have to be posted here.

I admittedly haven't played many RM games, but there's one I played that really caught my attention. That was Shangri-La by LittleLynn. There were some areas in the game that I felt could use improvements, but I fully enjoyed the story aspect of it.

Firstly, I thought the general story concept was somewhat unique. It had some clichés (i.e. amnesia), but they were used in a good way, in my opinion. What really stood out to me, though, was the dialogue. Each character felt truly unique. I'm not used to seeing that in either RM games or commercial games! Everyone, even the NPCs, had their own personalities and it was shown through conversations excellently. Also, each character having multiple things to say as you progress through the storyline is always a huge plus. If you feel like your dialogue could be better, I'd really suggest you take the time to play Shangri-La. :)

[DerVVulfman]

No levels. I repeat... no levels.

An old RPGMaker 2000 game, entitled Three the Hard Way (which I have posted in the Completed Projects forum) had a system where you gained a small increase in your stats after fighting battles. It would calculate your character's own base attributes into a mass point total and compare it to your enemy's estimated point total and if your character's score is lower than the enemy's... you get the bonus after each battle. Not bad for an RPGMaker 2000 game.

Even so, you only gained stats if the monsters were sufficiently tough. So if you kept fighting slimes, you wouldn't go any farther in your stat growth than after a few fights. I mean, come on. They're slimes!

[Deek]

There aren't many American RM games I enjoyed. I think the best ones were made by Europeans like ''Wilfred the Hero''. It had some kind of amazing fairytale atmosphere, of course awesome graphics and a nice story. The package was just eppic. The battle system was fun, but a little bit to unbalanced.
I could name more great games but you wouldn't know them since they are not available in English.

I also played ''3 The Hard Way'', but it was damn crappy.

Things I personally like very much in RM games in general are those I of course always include into my own: selfmade facesets for everybody (I abolutely hate it to see someone talk without having a faceset, or if I have to see a standard faceset which isn't even edited a little bit), semi-transparent picture textbox, no unedited standard charsets either, good mapping. Those are the MUSTs for me.

[Lunarea]

There are 3 things that I like to see in a project:

1) Graphical consistency-
I don't care if it's basic RTP or completely custom. As long as it's consistent all the way through, both in style and detail, I'm happy. If that limits the locations or if the maps end up looking unoriginal, so be it. The graphics are there to enhance the mood and atmosphere of the game. A crappy game with excellent graphics is still a crappy game. Good mapping is a plus, but I can forgive even mediocre mapping if it fits and the rest of the game is well thought out and created.

2) Good writing-
This includes a good story, good dialogue and proper spelling and grammar. I don't care about the cliches as long as they are a part of the story and presented in such a way that I'll care even if I'm not 100% surprised.

3) Content and progress-
I want to know that the project will actually get done. If you have to make compromises in areas such as using the basic combat system or same old graphics, so be it. If you're smart, you'll know where your strengths lie and use those for innovation; and forget about the rest. So, someone out there's got a more impressive demo or more impressive list of features. What's the point if their project never completely sees the light of day?