What Matters?

[Anuran]

What Matter the Most?

Gameplay V/S Story​

Some people go want to have a game with a rich,deep, engaging story while other like more of a game play varient like - the features,textures of maps,smooth flow of events etc.

I know that different people have different opinions, So what about You?
Do you like a game focusing mainly of story or a game Focusing mainly of gameplay.

I know that many will say both, but this is not a thread for that. Plz do choose only one which you love

I have created a poll. Let's see which is more wanted.
I got some error in making the poll from Mobile, so everyone can comment

 

[Dragonite]

I'm not going to say "both," but I will say that it matters far more to me that a game picks what it want to be and stick with it. If you want to have a super poetic story, make sure you write a damn good story. If you want to sell your game on its feature list, it had better be a damn good feature list. Don't tell everyone you wrote the story to end all stories and then deliver an Eye of Aragon clone, and don't use buzz words like "feature rich" and "cutting edge" to mean "I figured out how to install Elite Battle System."

Sure, people have tried making games that do everything, which works in theory but in reality you only have so much time and nerd-hours to do so much, and you either pull off a miracle like Uranium and release a game after nine years of development or - more likely - nothing's really polished and it shows. source source 2

textures of maps,smooth flow of events etc.

Technical/art stuff like "events don't trod on each other" and "being bug free" and "not mushing three generations of tilesets into one game" (yes people do that) is something that shouldn't be optional, and is something that players should be disappointed when they don't get rather than elated when they do. It's like buying a car and being happy that the brakes work. You should not be happy when your brakes work. You should expect your brakes to work.

Also, your post header is white and blends in with the background of the default Relic style :P

 

[Anuran]

O

I'm not going to say "both," but I will say that it matters far more to me that a game picks what it want to be and stick with it. If you want to have a super poetic story, make sure you write a damn good story. If you want to sell your game on its feature list, it had better be a damn good feature list. Don't tell everyone you wrote the story to end all stories and then deliver an Eye of Aragon clone, and don't use buzz words like "feature rich" and "cutting edge" to mean "I figured out how to install Elite Battle System."

Sure, people have tried making games that do everything, which works in theory but in reality you only have so much time and nerd-hours to do so much, and you either pull off a miracle like Uranium and release a game after nine years of development or - more likely - nothing's really polished and it shows. source source 2



Technical/art stuff like "events don't trod on each other" and "being bug free" and "not mushing three generations of tilesets into one game" (yes people do that) is something that shouldn't be optional, and is something that players should be disappointed when they don't get rather than elated when they do. It's like buying a car and being happy that the brakes work. You should not be happy when your brakes work. You should expect your brakes to work.

Also, your post header is white and blends in with the background of the default Relic style :P

Oh I was using the Balck theme of Relic Castle

 

[Keileon]

With Sardonyx, we focus primarily on narrative, story, character development. We do have some neat features, both purely custom and via various resources, but that's secondary to the story aspect of the game.

 

[Phi-Bi]

Ah, another story or gameplay topic. I'm not sure why we should "choose" which one matters the most. The two are interdependent especially with how Pokemon is "semi-RPG."

My thinking process about story or gameplay is:

1. Secure the gameplay so it's in a decent enjoyable state.
2. Elaborate the story so your game is not only fun but have meaningful substance.
3. Think about features which makes the game even more enjoyable. The features should support the story or vice versa.

So based on that, I guess my "choice" is story for it has more potential to be unique (coming up with innovative gameplay without scripting capability is near impossible you know..). However, if your gameplay is not enjoyable, why makes a game? Afterall in my opinion, the story is part of the gameplay and vice versa. And then the distinction of story and gameplay becomes meaningless, as in the case of RPGs.

 

[aiyinsi]

Well if you wanted to focus on one ... I guess both can be made outstanding enough for the other one to be acceptable to be bad. But it's a lot easier to have both be good.

But as Phi-Bi above me I'm not a big fan of differenciating between story and gameplay.

Like Dragonite said there are some things that you defenitely want to avoid:

• Having to many spelling errors or bad punctuation. This makes your game less smooth by making it harder to understand. Some people react pretty strongly to that too. So you want to try to avoid this.
• Bugs that either crash the game - causeing the player to loose progress, make the player stuck - making the player unable to progress without sending in the savefile or loosing progress by starting a new game or bugs that make standard gameplay annoying - for example lag, an trainer that always pops a message whenever you pass him, a picture that lingers on the screen when it isn't supposed to, ... . To avoid these bugs you need to playtest your game.
• Obvious bugs in general. Bugs that you can easily catch by playtesting once make it seem as if the game developer didn't put much effort into his game.
• unintended progression blocks - trainers that are too strong unless you catch a certain Pokémon making the player that doesn't catch that Pokémon having to grind a lot(and level grinding is not that fun in Pokémon) for example.
• be consistent in your art. That is something I personally am really bad at but as dragonite mentioned it's not well reconized if you're mixing tiles of generations that don't fit. (but imo you can actually get away with beeing less consistent than some people here on relic like to see ... but if your (non artist) friends can tell that something looks off you might want to consider this point)

Now how I usually go about a game is that I decide what the goal of the game is. What is the setting? Then I decide what gamplay is necessary. Do I want a standard Pokémon game? In that case I can just install Pokémon Essentials and I have all necessary gameplay elements. If I want some additional elements like a fancy ui or a new battle style I usually implement it before it is used for the first time in the game story wise. So that I can playtest my game how it's gonna be and spot bugs more easily. But that doesn't stop me from implementing a feature afterwards if I feel that it benefits the game.

Then I like to concentrate mainly on the setting. What I mean with "setting" is that I want everything to be consistent. That everything is logical from the in game view. Simply because I don't like worlds that are unlogical(plot twists and having mysteries that are uncovered later are good. But everything needs to be logical. If something is weird on purpose I like to have e.g. NPCs tell you about how it is weird so that the player knows that it is on purpose and has a reason that hopefully will be uncovered later or can be uncovered by exploring). So that the player can immerse into the game world.

But as Dragonite above me stated already: feel free to scim through the Pokémon fan discussion threads. There is a lot of discussion about what is how important.
Another thing: don't only focus on what we tell you but mainly on what you think is important. It's your game after all ;)

 

[Aki]

I think gameplay comes first. I know that might sound weird even to the point of hypocritcal from someone who made a game freaking called Bonfire Stories but hear me out ok?

A story you want to tell can take many mediums, from just pictures, to written books, to the visuals and audio of movies, to the interactivity of a video game and everything in between. What I think really appeals about the video game approach to storytelling is the level of interactivity the audience (player) gets to have with the story. It feels really personal as you play and empowering as you get to influence the story in subtle ways by interacting with the game mechanics.

Now, if you make a game and your main goal is to tell a story, but it totaly flops...maybe it just wasn't a good video game kind of story, or maybe the story needed a few more drafts and some polishing, but I bet most players will forgive that. There are plenty of games that are fun but have a story that's kinda weird or doesn't make sense when you step back from it, and that's okay! There are also lots of fun games that don't have story at all, we just happen to like stories in our games when it comes to the RPG genre.

Bad gameplay just ruins a game, because gameplay is the game. If I do something like making the Pokemon on Route 1 twenty levels higher than the player, not a lot of people are going to put in the unreasonable effort to keep playing and see my story. Or if for story reasons I give the Bad Guy Team Leader a legendary Pokemon with an overpowered ability, that might make perfect sense in the story but is going to piss players off and depending on how far into the game this happens, they're going to drop my game like a hot potato and swear an everlasting grudge against me, the spiteful idiot dev who did this to personally offend them. Some bad story beats can ruffle a few feathers, but bad game design just sheds players.

 

[Galaxia]

Gameplay definitely comes first. Think about Pokemon Red and Blue... The games did not have much of a story at all. Sure the twist that Giovanni was the last gym leader is always great, why did Pokemon become so big in the first place?

The gameplay. Battling and exploring.