ID:742913
 
Keywords: cliche, idea, premise, setting
I would like to ask the community: what concepts are you sick of seeing in games on BYOND or games in general? I want to know what you all think has been done to death and the very premise in a game is nauseating (so we, of course, can learn to improve/ avoid such things).
Games based off of anime. Punching logs. Games claiming to be original and being nothing more than a fan-game with a sloppy coat of paint.
In response to LordAndrew
Don't forget crappy, abusive "admins" who think that changing the name of a game makes it theirs.
The macro training has been a horrible game mechanic since it's first conception. It's sloppy, unintuitive, and takes the "Game" out of the "Game." When I play a game, it's to play something addicting, challenging, and able to be replayed for my entertainment. Not stand there and hold a key, watching my meaningless stats with no physical weight in-game climb slowly to some infinity.

I agree that most BYOND games nowadays have absolutely the worst, most bratty, childish, and narcissistic twats imaginable running the "Administration Staff." They feel as though just because they are "in charge" of a game, that they must be harsh and cold with their bans and boots. They try to act like big-name game admins because it makes them feel important. There's a reason those big-name game admins always seem in a foul mood, booting and banning almost without warning. It's because they have to put up with a thousand whiny little brats every single day who have nothing better to do than grief other players. After banning 999 of those kids, they'll not think twice before kicking you for the same offense.

Long story short, being an ass as an Admin only makes people hate you and your crappy game more. Act like a human being and treat others the same. Until you get 1000 players per day on your servers and have to deal with punishments in a large number on a daily basis, you have no reason to be prissy to any other player.

Anime games are fine, it's just that people have these exact same cookie-cutter molds for making the same awful Narutard project, without having the decency to even program the damn thing themselves. Little advice, recoloring a sprite and using it a project as your own is still plagiarism and theft.

Also, uncontrolled open world PvP is the worst idea ever created in the history of BYOND games, to date. It's worse than even the punching bag macros. Allowing high-level players to punish and grief the newbies at their own will is what makes playing a lot of these anime games, horrible. Yeah, I get your original idea, "Oh, open world PvP makes my game more realistic! It gives players a choice!" Well, not really. I don't play a game for it's realism, I play it for it's entertainment value, and I would much rather have some unrealistic fist barrier between my face and another player's wrath, than die every 6.32 seconds because some 12 year old who's level 1,783,437 thinks that I'm having more fun watching my sprite lay itself over, time and time again.
Byond : We Hate Ourselves

Why do I get the strange feeling this is not a healthy place to be haha. Whenever I leave Byond for a while I have good ideas and feel better. Funny that.
Games that don't focus on what really excites players to the specific genre.
Ex:
Action Games - Overly focus on making things ridiculous like being able to fly when you're a human being with no jetpack. Or taking (if you don't abide by realism and giving people number valued health) a 9mm pistol and having it somehow overpower a 5.56x45mm NATO assault rifle only because players love running around with pistols.
Most BYOND games focus on: "Hey, you're going against 5,000 mutants with a pistol. Guess what you can do? Somehow, you can increase the rate of fire on your gun by leveling your character up. Because, even if you become faster at the trigger, it totally means the gun magically evolves."

Adventure RPG - Focus too much on how fast one can grind/train their way to becoming overly powerful but yet doesn't focus on things that make the adventure fun. Examples are like Fable actually focuses on character progression in not only abilities but appearance and personality which defines "Role-Playing", as well as Fable focuses on you being able to enjoy the adventures you are taking whether it's through lush rich forests, or baron sand dunes, or exploring beautiful castles.
Most BYOND games focus on: "Hey, if you hit this log 100 times, you'll max out all of your stats. Oh and the quests can be done by just following this small path that has no scenery whatsoever except some random rocks and water."

Things like that.

If I had to ask for games to be remade (due to their age and dead development), I would ask for games like Mafia, Harvest Moon : Trinity Ranch, Scar(e)y Game, Iron Dogs, Murder Mansion, Casual Quest, Vengeance 56, Space Station 13, etc. Because they truly brought out interesting concepts that weren't really thought of during their time.
In response to Maximus_Alex2003
I've never heard of Iron Dogs, and is Casual Quest really that old?
SS13 is open source though. I would assume that it's always under constant development.
In response to Complex Robot
Iron Dogs is by WildBlood.

I didn't exactly mention age, but dead development as well. The game isn't being developed any more (which, one could argue it's finished, but I still see some room for improvements).

The problem with SS13 is, it's outdated. Even if people are adding things to it, they aren't redoing things to improve it. They're just adding more items and modes.
In response to Maximus_Alex2003
While it isn't DM, there's a group rebuilding Space Station 13 in another language. They do actually have some progress! Their site.
I feel like Casual Quest is supposed to feel like that. I don't think it should be changed in the slightest, it's perfect the way it is.
Argonus wrote:
I would like to ask the community: what concepts are you sick of seeing in games on BYOND or games in general? I want to know what you all think has been done to death and the very premise in a game is nauseating (so we, of course, can learn to improve/ avoid such things).

Other people have mentioned that they're sick of seeing bad games, but you should avoid making bad games whether we're sick of them or not. There's really no concept that people are tired of because hardly any concepts have been done well. If you make a fun game I don't expect that anyone could possibly say "sheesh, not another ______ game". Instead they'd likely say "finally, a decent ______ game!"

The problem with most BYOND games is that they just don't have a concept. People keep adding features but they have no idea what it is that'll make the game fun. They just hope the game will be fun if they add enough stuff but it doesn't work that way. With a good concept a game can be fun even if it's very simple.
I agree with Forum_Account. Just look at many of the most popular iPhone and Android games out there. Not a whole lot of them are anything overly complicated. It's just that they're presented in such a way as to make them both entertaining and addicting, which is exactly what you, as a developer, should be striving for.
I'm tired of seeing games that has NES mechanics and GBC graphics.

We're suppose to be designing games to compete with a console and PC market yet I've played games that work like Atari games. This is 2012, let's not take steps back and instead make progress by creating a 2D game that is actually in this era.
Once upon a death wrote:
I'm tired of seeing games that has NES mechanics

Many NES games had solid mechanics. There are lots of popular modern metroidvania games that have their roots in NES games. Cave Story doesn't offer much (in terms of gameplay) that you couldn't find in an NES game and it rivals the quality of any modern 2D game.

I'm also not sure what you mean by "NES mechanics". Lots of BYOND games have experience points and levels but that's not unique to NES games. If anything, BYOND game developers are trying to emulate modern games (not old games) too much. MMORPGs in particular - not every game has to be an open-world RPG with simple enemy AI, experience points, and PvP.

We're suppose to be designing games to compete with a console and PC market yet I've played games that work like Atari games

I haven't seen many BYOND games that work like Atari games. If anything, BYOND games are often worse because they can use modern interfaces. Instead of having a nice, clean control scheme BYOND games can use huge verb panels. Instead of making nice looking, cohesive graphics people can use Windows controls and forms, input() prompts, and alert() message boxes.

The problem with NES and Atari games were technical limitations. For the Atari 2600 I think you had 4kb of space to fit an entire game. The NES had more space and while Cave Story has NES-type gameplay, the NES couldn't have had such elaborate graphics (level of detail, number of tilesets, number/quality of animations, amount of sprites on the screen, etc.). Increased technical ability does let us explore new types of gameplay (ex: no NES or Atari game could offer the expansive world that Minecraft does), but that doesn't necessarily mean that old games had bad gameplay.
In response to Forum_account
I actually feel like a lot of Atari games are more fun than modern ones. It's the fact that since they were so limited with space, the developers had to focus on simple, addicting games with high replay value. That was the only way people would play them for long periods at a time.
I think that's one of the reason people like "retro" styled games. It reminds them of a time when artists and programmers had to do more with less. When you have very limited resources, it forces you to get creative- Zelda and Metroid were amazing in how they got around some of those limits and opened up huge worlds in a tiny space.

FA has a very good point- a simple, focused concept can pay huge rewards. Look at Super Mario Brothers. You basically can do two things- move and jump (and later throw fireballs) but that formed the basis of one of the most enduring game franchises ever.
In response to Jmurph
Unfortunately, like this topic suggests, the Mario series is still being beaten like an undead horse.
An undead horse that craps pure gold for Nintendo!

I will go out on a limb and say I don't like anime games conceptually. Most anime is highly contrived and fairly derivative (though some are clever). Most seems to cycle through the same tropes over and over, much like western sitcoms, action movies, etc. So when I see an anime game, I immediately think it is most likely a juvenile emulation of a bad concept. In all fairness, I also think that about games derived from movies, tv shows, etc.

Instead, I wish designers would focus on making a fun game, not a Naruto/Mario/Underworld/Family Guy/whatever game. Think about things like core mechanics and why anybody would want to do whatever it is you have to do in your game. Just clicking a verb or button over and over is *not* fun. Repetitive grinding is not fun. Using tight controls to navigate interesting environments is fun. Overcoming challenges (other than crappy controls) is fun. Think more casino (payouts, colors, lights, sound) and less drudgery (menial labor, mind numbing, punishing).
In response to Jmurph
Solomn Architect wrote:

The macro training has been a horrible game mechanic since it's first conception. It's sloppy, unintuitive, and takes the "Game" out of the "Game." When I play a game, it's to play something addicting, challenging, and able to be replayed for my entertainment. Not stand there and hold a key, watching my meaningless stats with no physical weight in-game climb slowly to some infinity.

Also, uncontrolled open world PvP is the worst idea ever created in the history of BYOND games, to date. It's worse than even the punching bag macros. Allowing high-level players to punish and grief the newbies at their own will is what makes playing a lot of these anime games, horrible. Yeah, I get your original idea, "Oh, open world PvP makes my game more realistic! It gives players a choice!" Well, not really. I don't play a game for it's realism, I play it for it's entertainment value, and I would much rather have some unrealistic fist barrier between my face and another player's wrath, than die every 6.32 seconds because some 12 year old who's level 1,783,437 thinks that I'm having more fun watching my sprite lay itself over, time and time again.

Forum_account wrote:

The problem with most BYOND games is that they just don't have a concept. People keep adding features but they have no idea what it is that'll make the game fun. They just hope the game will be fun if they add enough stuff but it doesn't work that way. With a good concept a game can be fun even if it's very simple.

I haven't seen many BYOND games that work like Atari games. If anything, BYOND games are often worse because they can use modern interfaces. Instead of having a nice, clean control scheme BYOND games can use huge verb panels. Instead of making nice looking, cohesive graphics people can use Windows controls and forms, input() prompts, and alert() message boxes.

Jmurph wrote:

Think about things like core mechanics and why anybody would want to do whatever it is you have to do in your game. Just clicking a verb or button over and over is *not* fun. Repetitive grinding is not fun. Using tight controls to navigate interesting environments is fun. Overcoming challenges (other than crappy controls) is fun. Think more casino (payouts, colors, lights, sound) and less drudgery (menial labor, mind numbing, punishing).

Just wanted to say i agree with every damn word, especially the annoying PvP issue Solomn mentioned.
Any chance anyone plubishes the main points of this thread with the next version of DM, XD??

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