Top 10 Mistakes Beginners make in RPG Maker

This is just a little fun and comedic list I’ve made to explain the top ten mistakes beginners and newcomers to RPG Maker do when they start making their games. By no means is this meant to be offensive or demeaning, but do learn from it if you could.

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10. Beginners attempt to make a Pokemon/Digimon game…

…as their first game. They do not know how much work is needed to be done to even make a Pokemon or Digimon game. The shear fact that there are dynamic characters “joining” your party from time to time is already difficult enough. Making all of that work with “evolutions” and having them behave properly after that is even more difficult. Let’s not forget there are hundreds of different types of Pokemon and Digimon out there. Making them all would be a nightmare and making them all work is even more tedious. Getting it to work like a Pokemon/Digimon game is just downright impossible without scripts, too. And let’s face it, if there’s a script out there that allows the creation of these games, it’ll be confusing as ever to use, especially for a beginner.

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9. Beginers try to sell their games as commercial…

…without realizing how to even make their game. Beginners announce demos for their games, include all of these selling points and special features, without even realizing that half of them aren’t features (example: incredible graphics, caterpillar system, etc). These demos are hardly complete, encompass not even 1% of the game they expect it to have, and from that, they expect it to be wonderful. They also use demos to showcase what their progress instead of using them to create hype for their games. They fail to realize that demos exist to give their audience a taste of what the expect, rather than to show what they’ve already (only) made.

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8. Beginners will make the final battle…

…before everything else. This is before beginners have designed and completed their database, balanced everything in their game properly, and made sure all final aspects of their battle systems are done. Making the boss battle comes way before all of that. This will generally result in the beginner recreating the final boss battle over and over again through each change they make in their database. They will go through times where the final boss is just way too weak compared to the strength of equipment for a final level party. Most of the time, they’ll just give up on balancing the boss and just give it 999,999 HP and MP and 999 for all stats. Problem solved, right? Not really.

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7. Beginners want to add in mini-games…

…without getting their base game done. For some reason, everybody wants a fishing mini-game, mining mini-game, herb growing mini-gaming, and card collecting mini-game. They want all of this before getting everything else set in their projects. Most of the time, this is before the beginners even know how events work so they have no idea where to even start on those fishing mini-games and such. Yet, the beginner will not continue progress on their game until these things are done for whatever reason. Mini-games are apparently more important than the main gameplay provided to the player…

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6. Beginners don’t ever play any RPG Maker games…

…other than their own. Thus, the beginner makes an extremely narrow-minded game without any techniques learned from other RPG Maker games (especially the open source ones). And as they further progress in making their own game, their ego also tends to grow larger and larger thinking that their game is the only one worth playing and paying any attention to. In the event that the beginner actually gets as far as completing their game, it ends up receiving horrible reviews, and the beginner can only help but to wonder why.

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5. Beginners try to force things to work…

…without figuring out what the problems they’re having are. When there are user created errors such as bad installment of scripts, events, or database errors, the players will blame the program for doing something wrong instead of themselves. They will then try to seek help for these problems without being able to explain why it might have even happened at all. Even worse, they’ll believe that scripts are the cure-all for all problems created by them (but they don’t know that last part). What they fail to realize is that by forcing these things to work, other parts of the game will break and they’ll repeat the whole process over again until there is practically nothing left as playable.

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4. Beginners add scripts…

…for the sake of adding scripts. Or even knowing how to use them. They take a look at the scripts, see pretty screenshots, and add them immediately without even trying to read the instructions. Then, when they have no idea how to get something to work, they immediately prompt to question the creator about how to do it. They do not go back to the instructions where they would find the answers reasonably faster than waiting for the creator to respond to them (if the creator even bothers to respond to them at all). Even worse, the beginners add all these scripts without realizing that some of them are incompatible with others and they wonder why their game breaks and caves inward.

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3. Beginners try to make custom resources…

…before understanding how resources work. Or even how to get them to look well together. They attempt to make custom faces and such without learning the dimensions, insert game sprites from commercial games (and then try to sell their own games, too, go figure…), and add tilesets without even understanding how these resources are imported into the program. They suddenly learn how hard it is to make the custom resources and then ask for help without even trying to figure out how to get the resources working.

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2. Beginners attempt to be too fancy with their battle system…

…or anything really. Especially for their first game. Without trying to learn the basics, the beginners attempt to create their own battle systems, their own MP systems, their own etc systems. All of it without even trying to make a vanilla RPG first. What they don’t realize is that even if they do attempt to create those fancy and custom battle systems, their execution of it will be extremely poor because they do not understand the fundamental basics required to create a decent game. All the extra fancy systems they tack on will have no synergy with each other and the whole game collapses in playability.

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1. Beginners try to make a game…

…before learning the program. The very core thing any beginner should do is to understand each and every inch of RPG Maker before attempting to create their game. They need to learn how to create items, open treasure chests, produce events, execute cutscenes, and more. By learning as they go, their first game, which is what they believe to be their dream game, will end up being their nightmare. It becomes very clear to the players that the creator had no idea what they were doing at the start (and probably still have no idea of what they’re doing at the end). With the first game being a failure, the beginner may lose hope in even making another.

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