Is RPG Maker MV over-priced?

[Tsukihime 1,489]

Wrote an article on the topic after doing some looking around at alternative 2D game engines. You can read it here: http://himeworks.com/2015/10/is-rpg-maker-mv-over-priced/

 

Thoughts?

Any engines that you would like to suggest to the list?

 

Should all companies offer their engines for free like Unity and Unreal?

[+ Chaosian 617]

[Edit: Edited this after some more significant thought on the subject.]

 

I guess it's time for me to play Mr. Bad Guy again that everyone hates. Though I honestly shouldn't be surprised, based on where we're talking.

As a product in and of itself, none of the RPG Makers are too terribly overpriced, though I'll stand by my position that as an upgrade from VXA, MV is pretty steep. That's not quite what this is about though, so I'll address this issue more directly.

 

Consider what you're buying with RPG Maker. You are buying an engine to make a top-down JRPG, that with a significant amount of effort and strong pipeline, you can make into a top-down ARPG. That's it. You could say "hey no, there exist platformers and turn-based strategies scripts" but these are novelties, hardly anything you could make a game out of, and something you are constantly fighting with your engine to make.

 

Contrast something like Game Maker. True, it is at a significantly higher price-point, but also a lot more powerful. Anything you make in RPG Maker, I could make in Game Maker (though granted, this would probably take more time). I could however, also make an actually fully functioning RTS with a full feature set, or a Platformer, in half the time and with a quarter of the net effort. Alternatively, I could go for things that RPG Maker simply can't do. I could make a racing game, or a 2.5D horror game, or a shooter. It's not just Game Maker either, essentially all of the big names you listed can do these better than RPG Maker can, or simply at all.

There's the argument that "but I just want to make an RPG", which is all fair and good, sure, RPG would naturally be the engine of choice for an RPG - but unless you want to put in some extreme effort, you are making an Enterbrain RPG. You are making a top-down JRPG with side or front view, turn-based combat. If that's your visions for your game (or, more likely, that's what you've made your vision fit into), then you have made the right choice in engine, but you're also paying $80 for that vision and that vision alone. $80 for two or three genres, versus $160 for six, or seven, or more, with infinite freedom between them, in often more common coding languages, or completely visually.

 

"Powerful enough for a developer" has always been quite a stretch. I doubt many people working in the AAA industry or with fully released games would ever consider moving engines to RPG Maker to be an upgrade.

Who knows, maybe that will change a bit more with MV's Javascript functionality. For some people with that knowledge, that will probably be the closest it's ever been to real open engine power. Maybe "powerful enough for development" would be the most accurate thing to say about that.

 

Other engines you could potentially add to the list include CryEngine which is an extremely powerful nightmare to work with, and Source 2, which hasn't had an official release date yet, but will follow the same 'free' approach.

Also, unrelated, congrats on 6900 posts!

Edited October 8, 2015 by Chaosian

[Traverse 144]

 

You are buying an engine to make a top-down JRPG, that with a significant amount of effort and strong pipeline, you can make into a top-down ARPG. That's it.

 

Not that I don't agree that the engine itself is comparatively limited next to the options in Tsukihime's write-up, but I would have to disagree with this statement.

 

I would say a good portion of people don't buy RPGMaker for the engine itself (or not just the engine itself) but for a license to use Enterbrain's RTP resources - the whole selection of all the graphical and audio resources that come with the engine. True, there are free resources available elsewhere, but I haven't seen a freely available package of resources as extensive and consistent as Enterbrain's RTPs tend to be yet.

 

Of course, whether or not those resources are worth $80 is another issue entirely.

[+ Chaosian 617]

There was another discussion about RTP floating around here actually, and it was something of an inconclusive discussion as to what you could actually legally do with RTP resources outside of RPG Maker.

 

Of course, the legality of their use is different than their actual use. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

Edited October 8, 2015 by Chaosian

[Darthneko 7]

Ok, I'm drugged up on cold medicine and feel the need to put in my two cents.  I will preface this by saying that I own both the pro version of Gamemaker Studio, as well as Unity 5, as well as RPGMaker XP and VXAce. I picked them all up either when they went free (unity) or on sale (gamemaker and rpgmaker). I am, however, fortunate enough to have a good paying job, and have already pre-ordered MV which will make it my first engine picked up at full price. 

 

So why am I getting MV if I have all those others?

 

Because it's the perfect tool for a very specific job and that, to me, is worth the price. Could I do everything RPGMaker does, plus more besides, in Gamemaker or Unity? Yes, absolutely. However, RPGMaker is very easy to use and does very specific things  built into it that would have to be recreated from scratch in other engines.

 

There's a guy on youtube who's basically recreating RPGMaker in Gamemaker and plans on releasing that engine pack for sale on the Gamemaker asset store, and I've been watching him with interest because there are some things possible in Gamemaker that really aren't possible in RPGMaker without extensive scripting. But it's taking him months to recreate in Gamemaker what RPGMaker does right out of the box, and he's much better at the Gamemaker language than I am. 

 

In short, I'm willing to pay MV's sticker price in order to pay myself the time that learning a scripting language or new engine would cost me. Side-view battle, larger screen resolution, and larger database are some of the things I've wanted out of RPGMaker and I've easily spent more than 8 hours mucking around with scripts and being frustrated, which is when I moved on to Gamemaker and Unity. RPGMV with those things built in? I'm willing to pay myself $10 an hour for the 8 hours I won't be spending beating my head against how to make VXAce do things it doesn't naturally do, when I'm not a Ruby scripter. (I'm actually more familiar with Javascript, which makes MV even more attractive.)

 

I have several games I'd like to make, some of which are better suited to one engine than the other. It just happens I have one idea which is perfectly suited to the old school JRPG style, and MV will do that, no mess or fuss required, with minimal effort. So to me, no, it's not overpriced - it's perfectly reasonable. I'd be more irritated over VXAce, honestly, if I hadn't picked it up dirt cheap in a bundle. It did, however, give me a good taste of what the RPGMaker engine does out of the box, and I'm really looking forward to what MV will do with the features I want added in.

[+ CVincent 234]

Considering box value to a new consumer who has never used an RPG Maker before, it's really not an awful deal. $80 is about the price of professional studio-made games and considering the things you'll be able to do with it you should be able to see the potential that comes with it. My main concern is the ability to create multiplayer games which I'm about to get into further detail.

 

I've used free MMORPG creation software before I went with VX-Ace and all of the software did what it was intended for and roughly had the same potential output as RPG Maker software. You could just as easily work with an open-sourced engine and use publicly available resources to create an ABS-styled multiplayer RPG. If MV offered multiplayer support then it'd potentially have more instant value. I'd assume it's possible to create multiplayer games using JavaScript, but it'd be a lot of effort on the consumer's end to get that kind of thing done.

 

Yeah, MMO or multiplayer RPG games may not be everyone's cup of tea. I came from a community that was built around it and found that if I had the resources I now possess I may be able to create something really fun. There's just a lot of unknown potential right now with MV and when that gets explored I think more people will see the value in it.

 

Aside from these things I suppose the resolution stuff might bother me. 48x48 isn't bad but being limited never is a great thing. Will we expect to see the next version of RPG Maker at 64x64 pixels per tile? We'll be able to create slightly more detailed objects, but if we're getting resolution size updates anyway then why not let us work with objects that can be made in higher quality?

 

For customers who have purchased VX-Ace and are looking at MV questionably, that's totally understandable. I managed to get VX-Ace for about $40 CAD on a sale so I was quite fortunate. The box price of MV is roughly $90 CAD.

 

I've kind of spewed out BS through this whole post without getting to a point. Is it worth it for new customers? Yeah, totally! It's actually on sale for close to the same amount that VX-Ace is being sold for. For returning customers? Not really unless you totally intend to get used to the new changes and want to use the features that MV offers.

[Zortik 15]

Wrote an article on the topic after doing some looking around at alternative 2D game engines. You can read it here: http://himeworks.com/2015/10/is-rpg-maker-mv-over-priced/

 

Thoughts?

Any engines that you would like to suggest to the list?

 

Should all companies offer their engines for free like Unity and Unreal?

 

 

It seems like you sparked interest in responding to the title of your thread, rather than the content of your post

 

Please consider my opinions on your topic and I'll try to reply to your questions as well.

 

In regards to your topic. You diminish your persuasive power when you include statements such as

"It would be difficult to objectively assess whether it is indeed over-priced or not. But that’s really just an excuse on my part: I just don’t know how one would appraise a piece of software in the first place)."

 

 

Replace it with a more empowering statement. 

"I tend to compare listed 'perks' of applications against the price of the product. Free usually comes with a lot of constraints and sometimes paying for a license can really offer a lot of freedom/power/resources."

 

Word it in a way that makes you feel comfortable and encourages the reader that you have some confidence in your research/method.

 

I believe it was a smart move to limit your comparison to other tools that had the ability to create a JRPG. Looking at game builders universally would leave you with an exhausting list that would drive readers away because of how busy it is. However, you listed some websites where you couldn't showcase similar metrics for comparison. You shouldn't list them in the same format and should instead 'account' for them in a closing statement. The closing statement would acknowledge that they are a similar tool, provide a link, and a 'bullet point' statement of why they didn't make the cut (because of poor website design or you didn't research yet).

 

A large criticism I have for you is that your research only took into account the tool in its name and it's export capabilities. I would like to challenge you to expand on what you started by researching and discovering the following:

What skill sets are needed to use the program at a basic level?

What advanced skill sets are needed to make best use of the program?

What resources (if any) are available for free (maintain for commercial use since you were talking of profiting from the games)

Is there an active community providing enhancements? Is there a cost / catch?

 

FInally, think about your target audience. Are you writing this for youth -> young adult? Are they completely ignorant to these tools?

Pick your demographic and make sure your introduction, highlights of your research, and conclusions (if any) are catered for that audience.

 

With that, best of luck on future articles and keep up the good work!

 

Since those are my 'thoughts' here is a response to the questions you asked.

 

Any engines that you would like to suggest to the list?

I believe you should have listed RPG Maker MV in the same format as the other tools. You made an assumption that those reading your article fully remember all of the listed features. In addition, RPG Maker VXAce at a minimum. It's the predecessor to this tool and an important comparison (especially with it going on sale every 2nd Tuesday).

Should all companies offer their engines for free like Unity and Unreal?

I'm indifferent on this matter. Rpg Maker offers me a LOT of what I want for a game. Free engines offer so much more in terms of possibilities, but the execution of creating all of it from scratch is beyond my current skills.

I would much prefer that those free engines have tool sets for game types and sell those as a package. As an example, within Unreal, they allow you to purchase the use of flesh and bones for a complete FPS game. Regular cost is $129.99 and it provides you with all the resources needed to make 3 basic maps, 8 different characters, and 20 different weapons in conjunction with all the scripts necessary to make such a title work. A tutorial should also be in place showing how to use these assets to make 1 map.

Repeat this for other genre's and allow those assets to be used commercially within the engine itself.

[Tsukihime 1,489]

In regards to your topic. You diminish your persuasive power when you include statements such as

 

Replace it with a more empowering statement.

When I wrote that line, I was hoping to get readers that may already believe MV is over-priced to think about how they have come to their conclusion, but now that I read it again it could have been done better.

 

A large criticism I have for you is that your research only took into account the tool in its name and it's export capabilities. I would like to challenge you to expand on what you started by researching and discovering the following:

What skill sets are needed to use the program at a basic level?

What advanced skill sets are needed to make best use of the program?

What resources (if any) are available for free (maintain for commercial use since you were talking of profiting from the games)

Is there an active community providing enhancements? Is there a cost / catch?

Thanks for your feedback.

 

Originally, the article was meant to be a simple price-comparison between different engines so that readers can see that 0-dollar 2D engines aren't commonplace.

 

Shortly after, I decided to stick with one particular criteria that made MV stand out apart from its predecessors - multi-platform export - because after looking at some tables, multi-platform export is actually not something businesses offer as part of their license.

 

I intentionally didn't choose to focus on any other criteria such as

 

- extensibility. What kind of options does the engine provide in terms of personalizing the engine for your own needs

- ease-of-use. For example, do you have to code everything, or do they provide a more visual designer approach.

- community assets. Is there a lot? Is it easy to find? Would you be able to get more help?

 

As it would require me to spend time examining each engine which may take days or weeks to fully understand how they work.

 

Though it would be a good idea to mention the scope of the article and perhaps why it is limited.

 

FInally, think about your target audience. Are you writing this for youth -> young adult? Are they completely ignorant to these tools?

Pick your demographic and make sure your introduction, highlights of your research, and conclusions (if any) are catered for that audience.

I didn't have a particular target audience in mind, but I will take that into consideration in future articles.

 

I believe you should have listed RPG Maker MV in the same format as the other tools. You made an assumption that those reading your article fully remember all of the listed features. In addition, RPG Maker VXAce at a minimum. It's the predecessor to this tool and an important comparison (especially with it going on sale every 2nd Tuesday).

That's true. I sort of threw MV in there but it really should be consistent.

Ace vs MV is still a pretty big question so that should also be in there.

Edited October 8, 2015 by Tsukihime

[Zortik 15]

Thanks for hearing me out

It's very easy to make an opinion about something someone else has made. I want to emphasize again that you did a good job with the article and the quality allowed me to have focussed area's of 'critique'

 

It's super easy to make suggestions for improvement than to create something from scratch.

 

Cheers!

[+ Chaosian 617]

I think another tangential discussion related to this is "why do you create games" - which could be a discussion in and of itself.

If you're looking to simply pass the time and have fun while doing it, then any RPG Maker suite is a good choice, because of the very shallow learning curve, RTP assets, and strong community behind it. In these regards RPG Maker is definitely worth your time and money.

 

If you're looking to tell your story then RPG Maker as a whole is probably worth this, but each engine iteration is really something that needs to be critically thought about. If you thought you could tell your story in one version, then what is the value of the next upgrade? Is it worth twice the price of the original concept?

 

If you're looking to launch a career, then you're probably not starting in the right place. I think it's quite telling that Enterbrain has never asked for royalties, or huge license fees when using their software - they're well aware that RPG Maker success are few and far in-between and that the money they get wouldn't be equal to just a flat fee for everyone. RPG Maker only approaches "powerful" for those with extensive knowledge about Ruby, and RTP has a lukewarm reception inside the community - the hell do people think it'll be received as outside the community? On top of that, while you'll definitely learn some important "best practices" developing your first games in RPG Maker, you'll do this in any engine. I myself started in the progenitors to Multimedia Fusion (or Click Creator, or whatever they rebranding and selling over and over again now).

[Tsukihime 1,489]

When it comes to game development tools, I put them on a spectrum.

 

On one end, you have your game libraries. Pure, programming libraries that you can use to build your editor, your engine, and everything else WITHOUT having to figure out how to send pixel information to your graphics driver.

 

On the other, you have specialized game engines that are crafted to build a certain type of game. For example, Mario Maker, or Flappy Bird Maker. Someone has built the interface for you and everything you need, and all you need to do is use it.

 

Like the toolkits that Zortik mentions, someone can provide you with an FPS starter kit in any game engine. Would you proceed to build Candy Crush from it? Probably not. Similarly, given an RPG starter kit, would you build an RTS with it? Probably not.

 

Most engines that I looked at are more general. They provide you with some tools to help you build your game, but it's up to you to figure out how to put it all together.

 

For example, I put together a top-down shooting game in Construct within an hour (using one of the shooting game templates it provides). I grabbed some kaduki sprites and had them shooting bullets at slimes. If I had to do this in RPG Maker, I'd have to use the scripting interface to build the shooting game engine, and THEN go from there. However, once I built the shooting game engine, anyone else could then integrate a shooting game into their own game using RPG Maker.

 

If you want to "launch a career" in game development and RPG Maker has all of the tools you need, then what's wrong with it?

If you have no need to build an RTS or an FPS or Candy Crush, then does it matter that RPG Maker doesn't provide good support for those?

 

Your career does not require you to use powerful, generalist tools, nor does your success depend on what you use.

Edited October 8, 2015 by Tsukihime

[Point08 219]

Overall, a well written article. I think I'll leave my feedback to that, or else Chaosian and I are likely to take over the thread whilst we argue with each other

[+ Takeo212 1,079]

To be honest, and I haven't read over the previous comments yet (the whole, my own opinion before reading everyone elses).

 

Wasn't Ace alot more costly than MV? I think it depends on what style of games you like to make, that the price is over or under priced.

I personally think the current MV price is fair. It's like a few GBP for me and it offer's a very wide variety from things such as browser gaming and cross platforming now.

I also prefer the style now and the current character generator is alot more up to date and nicer looking. They didn't go and recycle the previous one, like I originally thought they would have.

Heck, they even added in a new type of battle system (sideview) pre-built into the game, Yea, you can script that stuff but every script had alot of stuff that needed done, and alot of the scripts were hard to understand (for me) and written by someone who wasn't fully fluent in English, so the scripts were harder to understand sometimes.

 

I also think the pre-order bonus is a really nice deal. Did everyone complain when Ace was released, and that the pricing was to high? I was late to that system, so I got it on humble bundle.

I personally think alot of people were to reliant on Ace and previous versions being released on the humble bundles now a days at a really cheap price, and alot of people already want MV to be on a deal even though it was just released. I personally don't think it's overpriced - I find it fair considering - but I also know alot of hobbiest around aren't exactly made of money to go buy the updated MV, or already have their own project. Heck, I know alot of people who studied Ruby just for RPGM and suddenly it's using Javascripting.

 

I will be honest - I was learning javascript in my previous college course, but since I wasn't interested at the time, I instead stopped studying and tried to learn ruby instead so I could make RPG Games. I feel sad now because if I knew MV was a thing last year, I could have actually plaid attention in class! 

 

But yea, overall;

* I think MV is fairly priced.

* I think alot of people are to reliant on Humble Bundles - myself included sometimes

* I love the new sprite style and generator, and really look forward to getting the game

 

One thing I would like to see - for others, more than myself since I already pre-ordered - is maybe something similar to the Lite version of Ace?

It would help alot of people who are still indecisive understand what they are buying into, and if they should upgrade from Ace or not. That's my thought anyway.

 

 

I know there are alot more programs out there for making games of different styles, genres, ect. but personally, I have other programs, I just prefer RPGM. I understand it, I know it, and I want to tlearn to use it fully. The idea of learning a new program is hard considering you have to re-learn everything. Some 3D game makers require certain 3D making programs such as Daz or Maya. They cost money. RPGM can use GIMP, a free program that once you mess around with it, is easy to understand the basics of.

 

You cana lso make more unique games, if your willing to put in that time and effort. I see to many clone games nowadays - and yea, some can be good - but I personally just like sittign back and playing a nicely drawn RPG that doesn't require x amount of GB to install, and x amount of system graphical requires that breaks your PC because you can't afford a fancy gaming PC (My steam is full of games I cant play because PC sucks..).

 

I use RPGM as a hobby, and maybe in future I'll make a commercial game, but overall, it's not that much more pricey than Ace, but it has alot more features and such that you originally needed to script in - and for those unfamiliar with scripting, or not English-ly fluent, it could be hard to implement.

 

EDIT

In fairness, and truth, the fact MV is "over priced" to some can discourage the previous "RPGM Trolls" from being able to make trash games - in attempts to downgrade the system itself and stuff, but maybe this would allow users to make a game that people might actually try playing?

This is entirely opinion of the gamer of course, but I know there is alot of doubt in quality for RPG Maker games now a days, and maybe this would be a nice step forward - atleast until the game goes into a bundle or discount, ect.

 

I also know this affects people who actualyl want the system, but unfortunately that can't be helped right now.

 

 

That's my opinion anyway.

yay opinions!

Edited October 8, 2015 by Takeo212

[amerk 1,122]

Considering the leap between VX and Ace versus Ace and MV, it's a bit rich for my blood.

 

On the one side I could simply say, "Wow! They are charging the same amount as they did with Ace 4 years ago, so this is a definite steal, considering the cost of inflation has gone up since then and they could have easily charged $100 or more at pre-order!"

 

But then I have to take a step back and consider what are we getting with MV that we don't already have, and here's my long-winded breakdown response.

 

The leap from VX to Ace was large, and the price was worth it for me, in addition to the variety of audio we received at pre-order (which was better than the default Ace RTP's music). For me, I only ever used VX prior, so purchasing Ace was a given. But for those who had used XP before VX felt that we were paying a higher cost to get the things that shouldn't have been removed added back in. Even now, a lot of XP users don't consider Ace a worthy buy as a result of this, and for not adding back key features from XP such as layers and priorities.

 

Now, blindly speaking MV is looking to be a great buy. Multi-platforms, higher resolution, plug-ins with all sorts of added possibilities.

 

 

But what's being sacrificed?

 

• The potential for losing hundreds of previous resources that will not work out of the box without first converting, reformatting, and trying to upscale them properly.
• The cache of scripts we have (sure, every maker goes through this, but now we have to rely on a new programming language, hope enough script writers will be ready to leave Ruby behind to learn something new, and that non-scripters will be able to customize them easily enough).
• Multi-platform may not come without its own problems, such as the implication of needing a Mac version of MV to make an RM game for Mac users.
• The possibility that midi will no longer be supported, as was briefly suggested at RMW.

 

But then again, with the NDA in place, a lot of things are speculation. However, while we are getting some much needed upgrades, beyond higher resolution I really can't see what I'm gaining without having sacrifice so much. In the long run, perhaps it will be better, but the current short-run I'm going to have to wait.