21 replies to this topic

[Arthur Yarbrough]

Hello all. I am currently working on an RPG based off of the old Dataware game, Quest Creator. For those who never played it, this game allowed you to create a party of up to 6, and play quests that were either downloaded online and made by somebody else, or that you made yourself. You could use the same party in all these quests, allowing you to upgrade your characters infinitely until there were no further upgrades to obtain, and even then you could still play as many quests as your imagination could create.

Having always been a fan of games that give you the control and let you control your character's fate, I decided to take it upon myself to make a more modern remake of this game. Some changes I am already planning include an actual leveling system, (Quest Creator only allowed improvement by obtaining better gear/spells) much deeper character customization for both the party and the enemies (such as choosing elements of the character's past that will influence their stats, weaknesses, strengths, etc.) NPCs you can talk too, customizable level terrain, and possibly more of a "Final Fantasy" battle system rather than the current turn based one to allow for "safe zones" and such.

The best part is that I am going to create a site where parties and quests can be shared online. :D Also there will be a special section dedicated to the actual realm of the game world for those who prefer a more "lore friendly" experience rather than moving through random quests in a million different worlds. XD So if the game gets active enough, the fun will never have to end!

NOW the reason I have this here is because I would like the opinions of the community on a few questions I am currently debating. Feel free to answer some, or all of these as well as ask any questions you have yourself. :D

- The games name. (I am looking for something a bit more creative than "Quest Creator")

- Ideas for keeping the leveling system from being OP. (I am trying to come up with a way to keep it where someone couldn't just create a random quest with a creature that gives them 999999999999 exp with 1 hit point and max level instantly. At the same time I don't want to restrict how much exp can be earned because if a fight is extremely difficult I want the rewards to be worth it. I could make it where the exp/money/gold/etc. is automatically decided based on the enemies stats, but I don't like the idea of taking control away... but maybe it would be the better choice? Idk. :/)

- Player/enemy variety. What different creatures, players, etc. would you like to either play or fight against. o.o I do plan to add characters from existing shows/animes to be possible, but just anything in general. (I cant think of a way to make a system to add your own characters without it being messy, expecially when distributing the quest or party, so I am just going to stick with pre-made sprites but as many of them as I can get. Freedom of choice is a #1 priority in this game.)

- Ideas to make the characters deeper.

- Anything in general you can contribute.

[Silver Scratch]

In my opinion putting the expirience depending on the enemies stats is a good idea. Since we have trouble balancing the difficulty of the enemy to the exp. Its just my opinion since my RPG Game (GM) does that. Also i was too lazy to put the winning exp so yeah. It is very balancing.

[The Legend]

Make sure that no matter what enemies you put in that they don't fall into the trap of over-powerful bosses! I've played far too many games where the enemies are at to much of an advantage against the player and obliterate them. Whether the combat is turn-based, special attack based, chance based or whatever make the enemies on the same playing field as the player!

[Silver Scratch]

Well you have played pokemon games right? I was thinking putting the stats of the player depending of his class. Swordsman, mage, thief, yada yada. Try to NOT tooverpower the moves. My friend made the new skills stronger than the old ones. Making me only use the strong ones only. Try putting advantages and disadvantages to each skill. For example.
Slash(Normal)Pwr(40)
Burning Slash(fire)Pwr(30)May burn enemy.
I did that on my game. It is very effect balance but as always. There should be a stronger move but difficult to get. If its not turned based then it might work also. Mine is turned based. I never completed it. :/

[xhawkeyex]

Maybe you could have the xp points earned from defeating enemies be the enemy health and strength levels combined

[Arthur Yarbrough]

In my opinion putting the expirience depending on the enemies stats is a good idea. Since we have trouble balancing the difficulty of the enemy to the exp. Its just my opinion since my RPG Game (GM) does that. Also i was too lazy to put the winning exp so yeah. It is very balancing.

Yeah that's what I'm planning on doing. It would just be a difficult task as enemy strength won't just be dependent on its attack, strength, defense, etc. but also by factors such as elemental strengths/weaknesses, resistances to magic/physical attacks, and other things that could create challenging or weaker opponents based on the party challenging the foe.

Actually look down below at what I wrote as a responce for Hawkeye's post. It goes more in depth about the factors that would need to be adressed in order to balance enemy strength to exp gain.

Make sure that no matter what enemies you put in that they don't fall into the trap of over-powerful bosses! I've played far too many games where the enemies are at to much of an advantage against the player and obliterate them. Whether the combat is turn-based, special attack based, chance based or whatever make the enemies on the same playing field as the player!

Yeah balance is going to be tricky, expecially since the player who makes the quests needs to have a way to create quests for all parties experienced or new, as well as a means for improving enemies as the quest goes on. In quest creator the quests could have a "recommended party amount" and maybe I could implement a "recommended party level" dependent on the levels of enemies in the quest. As for bosses, maybe I could make it where bosses can only be so much more stronger than the basic enemies of a level so that a quest maker can't make weak enemies and an undefeatable boss. How does this sound? o.o Any suggestions?

Well you have played pokemon games right? I was thinking putting the stats of the player depending of his class. Swordsman, mage, thief, yada yada. Try to NOT tooverpower the moves. My friend made the new skills stronger than the old ones. Making me only use the strong ones only. Try putting advantages and disadvantages to each skill. For example.Slash(Normal)Pwr(40)Burning Slash(fire)Pwr(30)May burn enemy.I did that on my game. It is very effect balance but as always. There should be a stronger move but difficult to get. If its not turned based then it might work also. Mine is turned based. I never completed it. :/

Of course I've played Pokemon games. XD I had an addiction period with them haha. (I still sort of do. ) I like the idea of making each move have advantages and disadvantages so that they remain useful forever and in different scenarios rather than just for a limited time. It would be like making the strength improvements mainly result from leveling rather than new moves. I like it, it's a thought that never really crossed my mind... yeah... I really like it. :D

Maybe you could have the xp points earned from defeating enemies be the enemy health and strength levels combined

It's not so simple. As I said before, there will be other factors such as elemental advantages/disadvantages and resistances that need to be accounted for. For example an enemy with 100 hit points and 20 strength may have a resistance of say... 90% against physical attacks and a weakness of 50% against fire. If you have an experienced dark mage alive that can cast a spell of fire, the foe will be much easier to kill than say if you only have melee fighters. The same applies for the player. If the enemy has 20 strength, but you have a piece of armor equipped that makes you say... 30% resistant to physical attacks then the fight will be easier than if you have a piece of armor that makes you take 30% less fire damage, but you take 25% more physical damage as a downside. It would be a very complicated formula.

[Silver Scratch]

Really glad you'd like it So since me and you are making kindoe a RPG like game. I love sharing some of my ideas. Anyway about my friend using overpoweful skills is true. He uses RPG Maker and i actually got bored since i only had to use ONLY the strongest skills to beat every single new enemy. Especially when he made them be indestructable iron man. No weakness just super high defence. He made me hate RPG Maker Lol! So i'm 100% using GM. I'm still not close to a so so with GM but yeah GM is better. Anyway one more suggestion. Try to make a decent level up. Since in a Pokemon game you can level up to 5~30 in one whol day (me love pokemon). I don't know but i did this in my RPG Game. I did something called "Rates" and if its online then it helps alot. I usually go for inis. Exp rates=1 (1=1% exp gain) and you can modify it. (of corse don't put 1 since it will take years to level up) and you can publish it to a level up. Example. ExpRates=120; You'll get 120% exp. Killing a monster that gives you 20 exp will instead give out 24 exp. I don't really know how to explain. Anyway best of luck to you!

[Arthur Yarbrough]

Really glad you'd like it So since me and you are making kindoe a RPG like game. I love sharing some of my ideas. Anyway about my friend using overpoweful skills is true. He uses RPG Maker and i actually got bored since i only had to use ONLY the strongest skills to beat every single new enemy. Especially when he made them be indestructable iron man. No weakness just super high defence. He made me hate RPG Maker Lol! So i'm 100% using GM. I'm still not close to a so so with GM but yeah GM is better. Anyway one more suggestion. Try to make a decent level up. Since in a Pokemon game you can level up to 5~30 in one whol day (me love pokemon). I don't know but i did this in my RPG Game. I did something called "Rates" and if its online then it helps alot. I usually go for inis. Exp rates=1 (1=1% exp gain) and you can modify it. (of corse don't put 1 since it will take years to level up) and you can publish it to a level up. Example. ExpRates=120; You'll get 120% exp. Killing a monster that gives you 20 exp will instead give out 24 exp. I don't really know how to explain. Anyway best of luck to you!

I think I understand. Kind of how in Final Fantasy X (Not sure about the other FF games.) you can get say... 100 exp for killing an enemy (Or an 100% XP rate) but if you get an overkill on the enemy you may get 120 exp instead from an increased XP rate?

I'm up for any ideas definately when it comes to the leveling system. This will be completely from scratch without even a basis to work from. (Since the original Quest Creator didn't have leveling. Just gear improvements.) The part that is the most complicated when it comes to this is that the quests are all going to be user made, not built already for the player. That leaves a ton of balancing issues, including the speed of leveling.

In the original Quest Creator you could easily start your party with max gold, or make a quest with easy enemies that give 9999999 gold. I'm trying to avoid this, but I need some ideas on how it can be done. Right now I'm debating making the gold/exp drops dependent on the enemies strength, and only allowing so many enemies per quest level (Each quest can be broken in several parts if desired. Each part can be replayed at any time too by any party.) to prevent a quest based on grinding tons of levels. This may help some with leveling too quick but I'm still open for new ideas.

[mach3000]

game name: quest quaft

[Adequate]

call it Stories

[Jster391]

call it Stories

Stories? Really?

[Adequate]

What's wrong with stories?

[Yal]

(I am trying to come up with a way to keep it where someone couldn't just create a random quest with a creature that gives them 999999999999 exp with 1 hit point and max level instantly

One idea would be that the "combined party level" power, gained from playing quests, is somehow used both to decide what quests you can take on, and what stuff you can put in your quest. For instance, just a "You Must Be This Tall To Ride" value that's based on the rewards of the quest instead of just the challenges in it could stop that kind of exploit.


Another idea would be something the Disgaea games has done all the way from the beginning: they use relatively few monster types, but each monster has a level just as a player character would. If you want a stronger monster, you just place one of a higher level. Also, each character has 6 palettes, each one meaning a bunch of extra stat growth points and a cooler color scheme (e.g. the highest level Ghost palette has black skin and red eyes), but that's just a nice extra.

Also, the idea is that a killed monster gives you XP and money based on its level; this rate is set in stone, so if you kill a Lv.27 Wyrm you will get 1 410 XP and 962 gil, no matter what else is in effect (apart from XP/money boosting items, etc).



So my suggestion is: instead of letting the players generate the contents themselves 100%, you let them generate the map and place items, enemies etc from a "palette" of stuff they've unlocked via playing quests.


The Disgaea games also has a "Bonus gauge" system for spoils, this basically means that as you score combos and stuff, you fill up a meter, and every 100 points you add an item to the spoils queue. When the battle ends, you will get anywhere from zero to ten items (an "item" here can also be a fair chunk of XP or money) depending on how full the bonus gauge is. Also, the rarity and niceness of the items depends on the current stage's "Bonus Level", which is basically the average enemy level multiplied with 0.5. So early stages has a bonus level of 1 and crappy items, later stages with Lv.100 enemies has a Bonus Level 50 and diamond armors and stuff dropping into your possesion where you clear them.

Using such a system might help, perhaps? You could let the player select what rewards would pop up in the Bonus Gauge themselves, but they may only select items that are max "Bonus Level" rarity or less.

[Jster391]

What's wrong with stories?

It's very...not interesting? All though I have no better ideas so go ahead.

[Benxamix2]

QuestCraft?

Edited by Benxamix2, 20 February 2012 - 03:58 PM.

[Jster391]

I like Quest Craft...Sounds full of adventure.

[mach3000]

game name: Fable Weaver cuz it sounds kinda cool

ever read those books where you can choose a path then flip to a different page to see the outcome of your decision?

maybe the game can be like that

start off with basic beginnings then it starts branching off and each branch is a quest made by people or you

"what if i fought that guy", "what if i spared that guy", "what if i saved the person lying on the road instead of hurrying off to save the princess who's gonna die really really soon"

doing it that way, you could kinda control the exp and difficulty too kinda

starting quests could be worth 100xp and maximum hp for monster 100hp, well you get the idea. then make a decision, and the next step would be a lil higher difficulty

haha, make it so that in one branch, one of your characters HAS to die, or gets lost and you actually trade your character for another person's character

[Silver Scratch]

Trading characters sounds wierd/weird but it would be nice for them to have different stats. So when trading you can atleast know what your trading. Example: A mage has alot of magical attack and you want to trade it with a archer who has long range attacks, high attack speed but low deffence. This would be very helpful cause its boring to trade just for what the character looks. Btw i ran out of ideas...

[mach3000]

random idea..

special quest item drops

what if.. bosses or certain enemies of a specific questline drop special items that are needed to start other questlines. with this key feature, quests that ppl create can be "connected" in a way. example: a dragon boss from a quest can drop a dragon's eye, and you need the eye and a crystal shard from another quest to give to a wizard that you save along the way. and she makes something out of those items to help you pierce through the darkness of a deep forest in another questline.

i never played quest creator so i dunno how things worked in that..

[fluffydino2000]

random idea..

special quest item drops

what if.. bosses or certain enemies of a specific questline drop special items that are needed to start other questlines. with this key feature, quests that ppl create can be "connected" in a way. example: a dragon boss from a quest can drop a dragon's eye, and you need the eye and a crystal shard from another quest to give to a wizard that you save along the way. and she makes something out of those items to help you pierce through the darkness of a deep forest in another questline.

i never played quest creator so i dunno how things worked in that..

I like this idea. However, it seems a little awkward to try and join peoples quests if the people hadn't designed them to do so. But, if there was a way people could connect there own quests.

Also, an over world for the game would be interesting. Maybe you could have portals, and the portals would take you to the location for the quests. Portals could be level based access and could take you to a random quest of it's level. That way, the game would feel more continuous.