List of The Most Innovative Takes on General Game Mechanics (Shopping, HUD, Stat Distribution, etc)?

[Deleted User]

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[Taleweaver]

Erm...while I'm all for the idea, I don't think a forum thread is the best medium to convey what you're trying to make. On a forum especially aimed at video game developers, perhaps, but even there I would opt more for a wiki.

Also...while I'm sure you mean well, I cannot really comprehend what you're saying. It probably makes a lot of sense if you've played shin megami tensei 2, but as someone who hasn't, all I get is "okay...so instead of just being able to buy/sell one item, it'd be great if we could buy/sell many at a time". I'm fairly sure I'm missing something, but I can't say what.

 

[FAST6191]

Is that selling mechanic a particularly new one even back then? I could probably find a roguelike that had a three or four window setup that functionally did that (here is my inventory, drag to here to buy it, here is yours, drag to here to offer for sale, or a discard pile in the inventory) and had a stack of things for sale, don't know how early I would get for that with a category split but I would say it is an obvious paring.

"easily quantifiable (Time Saved over other shopping mechanics)"
Does that come at the cost of complexity though? Similarly is it the fault of too much complexity? Do I need elevnty billion functionally similar items in my game such that I need that?

 

[osaka35]

So basically, you're wanting to talk about things like accessibility/functionality rather than engagement? As a general rule of thumb, the less clicks and less searching required to do a thing, the more accessible the design. Trick is to maximize/balance functionality with accessibility. too complex and you lose accessibility, too simple and you lose functionality. Xbox 1 OS is a good example of getting nearly everything wrong, while ps4/switch OS do it better.

Kind of lost me on the item thing as well, though I've never played the game. Images comparing a "standard" and a "better" idea would go a long way. Though as a text-based forum, probably not the best medium to do it. I'm all for the idea though, just got to figure out how to design it.

 

[Deleted User]

"easily quantifiable (Time Saved over other shopping mechanics)"
Does that come at the cost of complexity though? Similarly is it the fault of too much complexity? Do I need elevnty billion functionally similar items in my game such that I need that?

Surprisingly, the process was no more complicated than buying items in pokemon "Talk to Store Clerk>Click Buy or Sell>Scroll down list of items and change quantities of each item you wish to buy or sell on the right side of the screen"

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So basically, you're wanting to talk about things like accessibility/functionality rather than engagement? As a general rule of thumb, the less clicks and less searching required to do a thing, the more accessible the design. Trick is to maximize/balance functionality with accessibility. too complex and you lose accessibility, too simple and you lose functionality. Xbox 1 OS is a good example of getting nearly everything wrong, while ps4/switch OS do it better.

Kind of lost me on the item thing as well, though I've never played the game. Images comparing a "standard" and a "better" idea would go a long way. Though as a text-based forum, probably not the best medium to do it. I'm all for the idea though, just got to figure out how to design it.

I apologize for not adding images, the process of the aforementioned shopping mechanic really is as simple as I have described it in my response to FAST6191; Although, I acknowledge I could have done more to improve the readability by utilizing visuals to convey these types of processes more clearly as you and others have mentioned and I am grateful for that feedback. In the end I am only one person and I practically will never play every game that has existed or will exist (not even RPGs and I have played A LOT of RPGs), so definitely having more people to contribute to the list and refine other's submissions would be essential to creating this resource; Someone mentioned this may work better as a Wiki Page, I think that makes the most sense as well, so I will look into that and hope the idea will take.