Board 8 > Is it really that hard to copy FF6, FF7, CT etc's formula?

(+) Yeah! (+)

From: the icon ownz all | #050
You're invested in the wrong medium, then!

Nah, I've spent hundreds on books and television series!

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No random battles, fun fast-paced battle system with just enough leveling options to keep you in the game but never overwhelming with micromanagement, no fat/filler

this describes both Radiant Historia and Legend of Heroes.
yeah, they're the two best 'normal' rpgs on their respective system (so not including CV or EO series because one's action based and the other takes a completely different style).

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"Maybe it's a tentacle, molesting the planet itself. - Aschen Brodel.

the Persona series seems to have done really well, and they don't quite "copy" any existing formulas

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~AHylian is Still Alive~

If you're interested in writing and gaming, visual novels are probably what you want to look at. They are the best written stories in gaming.

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Visual novels aren't games.

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And they don't hold a candle to the better game stories for the most part. Too much melodrama, not enough knowing when to go low or gritty.

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It's probably not hard, bu they aren't very good formulas anyways. I'd rather see more JRPGs copy Persona or Tales of than any of them.

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TomNook7 posted...

**** I want Xenoblade now


I would recommend getting on that

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I would recommend getting on that

nintendo fans reward nintendo for not releasing their games here...by going out of their way to throw their money at nintendo anyway

xfd

Liquid Wind posted...
I would recommend getting on that

nintendo fans reward nintendo for not releasing their games here...by going out of their way to throw their money at nintendo anyway

xfd

I mean these are the same people who happily buy entire systems again due to a minor redesign. Its like they enjoyed getting violated by Nintendo

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or using a USB drive but sure that works too

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or using a USB drive but sure that works too

a lot of people are importing it anyway though!

From: RPGLord95 | #023
I loved Black Sigil, the encounter rate really isn't that bad. It is a little high but not awful, and the fights are quick once you realize how the battle system works.

you are the biggest liar on the planet. the encounter rate in black sigil is the worst i've ever seen and the random encounters always take 2+ minutes. you get an encounter literally every 4 ****ing steps and even trying to escape from a battle takes long. most of the time you're better off just fighting.

seriously stay away from this game unless you have godly amounts of patience or some sort of ar code to deal with the encounters.

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There is a reason video game developers do not follow formulas: they are literally incapable of doing it. One clear example of this can be seen in the Tribes series.

Starsiege: Tribes was basically the blueprint of the ultimate FPS, requiring high levels of skill, speed, and synergy to perform well with teammates. Of course, you could always try to go off on your own and hope it works. Having things like jetpacks and skiing should've completely changed the world of the FPS and forced it to evolve from the Wolfenstein/Doom generation.

Unfortunately for the Tribes series, it was about to get a taste of people who couldn't follow a simple formula.

Tribes 2 tried to remove all the speed in an effort to increase the focus on synergy - forcing people to work together on offense because it was almost impossible to do everything yourself. It probably still would've been successful if it wasn't the glitchiest game ever made.

Tribes: Aerial Assault tried to be a console version of Tribes 2. They removed the skill by adding autoaim features, which expert players actually loathed because it would make them MISS shots and they couldn't turn the feature off. They removed modding features because it's a console, so they were trapped with the default features of Tribes 2. It probably still would've been successful if it was made for a system with actual online instead of the PS2.

Tribes: Vengeance removed all the synergy in an effort to put a near-complete focus on speed. They added their own spin with a grappling hook that removed all the skill from movement and raised the skill ceiling for bringing down flag carriers to the point that it was basically luck. All this stuff happened because it was meant as a single player game first and a multiplayer game second, in a series where multiplayer is the main point of the series. It probably still would've been successful if it wasn't released at the worst possible time ever for a game to drop (alongside crap like HL2, Doom 3, World of Warcraft, etc).

And in Tribes: Ascend, Tribes players haven't even PLAYED it yet and can still clearly see where they didn't follow the formula due to what we've seen of it. By putting a major focus on F2P and providing pre-defined loadouts, they removed the customization that is the hallmark of the series. By having every other weapon be an SMG, they removed the skill and style that is the hallmark of the series. By only giving out two weapon loadouts, they try to force synergy on people by making it almost impossible to perform any role by yourself. It might still be successful if not for the oversaturation of the FPS in the market (there's like 10 F2P FPSes coming out, in a year where MW3/BF3 are clashing to see whose evil empire is the strongest).



Tribes is an apt name for a series where the fanbase gets moved off of its land and thrown onto reservations, given only "approved" gameplay that is clearly inferior.

But honestly, I wonder if this topic isn't just a waste of time. Formulas are good for making a game that people will continue to play, but it has almost nothing to do with the financial success of a game. Tribes 2 deviated from a winning formula and still ended up selling almost half a million copies. It might even be BETTER financially for a game to follow an inferior formula so that it becomes replaceable by the next game in the series.

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Red Shifter, what do you think about TF2?

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I've never played the originals, but I know that they followed a formula based more around speed and skill. They didn't have things like damage falloff/critical hits, a lot of classes had more to work with, you could preserve momentum with bunny hopping, turrets were much weaker...

When you make overrated games that people consider to be the best ever for some reason, you have more time as a developer to work on a game for longer periods of time and try to gain a higher profit from them. Consumers see these longer periods of time and it gives more time for them to get hyped about the game. It also affords developers more time to fix bugs. If Tribes 2 had gotten the kind of time Half-Life 2 did, the FPS would be a completely different entity today.

As far as TF2 is concerned, Valve saw where the FPS was headed (Halo, Call of Duty, etc.) and tried to make a game that was more accessible. They removed skill from most of the classes and tried to make a game that was far more about teamwork than what I perceive the original games to be. This turned out to be a good decision; Team Fortress had some great ideas, but it wasn't really all that refined. The deviation from the formula doesn't really mean all that much financially until you get into the micro-transaction era, when they fully realized the power of keeping consumers playing a game. There are very few companies that can make a money stream like that. But it wasn't the formula that kept people playing. If the game didn't have critical hits, Soldiers did more self-damage, or Level 3 turrets didn't get rockets, the course of the game would not have changed. It was the formula of a bunch of people working in a team of class-based warfare that kept most people playing. For everyone else, there are 4 sniper rifles.



As far as my personal opinion on TF2, imagine a genre in which every game is Hotel Mario, and one game is Super Mario Sunshine. TF2 is Super Mario Sunshine: not downright terrible, but not all that great either.

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