Passive vs Active Sea Travel

[OctoberRaven 11]

So, in my next project, the party will have to travel by ship to reach other locations. As such, I'm considering two options for traversal by sea: One where you simply pay for ferry and effectively warp to another area, and another where you charter a ship to help you on your travels and have a permanent traversal tool.

The pros of both:

 

Passive:

-More consistent with the story, as well as the currently planned captain of the ship

-Easier to restrict travel to the late game areas

-More consistent with even later game travel as currently planned

-Allows for cutscenes and potential comedy

-If I don't do random encounters in the overworld, this will reduce time of travel between cities.

-And I can still do a miniboss battle aboard the ship, a la Ultros

 

Active:

-Player agency

-If I do decide to random encounters, more variety in those said encounters can be made

-Potential for easter eggs.

-Can still do cutscenes I suppose, but will take more effort to work on them.

-Ditto with minibosses

[PhoenixSoul 1,404]

I've done this kind of experiment before. It was definitely necessary when using the console versions of RM.

Right now though, I'm working on a driving system where one actually drives a vehicle on a preset roadway similar to Road Rash. I need to see if I can get Mode 7 working if I want a 'from behind' view, and I still need to find vehicle graphics...

[OctoberRaven 11]

15 hours ago, PhoenixSoul said:

I've done this kind of experiment before. It was definitely necessary when using the console versions of RM.

Right now though, I'm working on a driving system where one actually drives a vehicle on a preset roadway similar to Road Rash. I need to see if I can get Mode 7 working if I want a 'from behind' view, and I still need to find vehicle graphics...

 

I'm both impressed and a bit jealous that you're talented enough to even consider that option with RPGMaker.

Edited May 15, 2020 by OctoberRaven

[PhoenixSoul 1,404]

Well, the driving system will mostly be a bunch of parallel process stuffs, reliance on button input commands, with some scripted stuffs going on in the BG.

I mostly need to make the roadways and of course, get further along in story development before even getting to that point...

[Kayzee 4,032]

Why not both? That is, why not start the game with passive sea travel and give the player a ship of their own later in the story? This is actually something that's pretty common in JRPGs, particularly the Final Fantasy series. When game starts out, you don't really have a lot of options on where you can travel, and the game can be quite linear. But after a suitably climatic part of the story the player reaches what I have heard described as 'the Freedom Point', where the player can finally go anywhere they wish. This can often happen in stages too, which is why RPG Maker has different vehicle types. A boat for shallow water, a ship for shallow+deep water, and an airship that can go everywhere. Also many Final Fantasy games aren't afraid to give you a ship or airship for a little bit and take it away later, but they eventually give it back for good.

[That One NPC 321]

I would firmly agree on both. My plots are usually long-form, so I'd end up script 1 or 2 ferry shots prior to the player being able to access/afford a charter.

 

I would 100% have both. And if you have naval exploration, I strongly suggest put in secrets you can access from the ship. At least a few, of varying types. Be it a good Training/drop table area, a treasure find, a secret town with good shops/a secret follower, w/e you end up deciding on.