What can be done to make RMMZ have overwhelming positive reviews?

Started by DoubleX, September 20, 2020, 12:08:06 pm

Previous topic - Next topic

DoubleX

While RMMZ has already released for about a month, the reviews are still mixed(64% positive among 225 reviews), at least according to Steam(I failed to find any other quantified reviews of comparable significance yet).
Although the overall score shows a slight upward trend overall, it still doesn't seem to look good, at least compared to RMMV, where it received 108 positives and 27 negatives, netting a 80% score, with a much more obvious upward trend later on.

The most obvious thing that can be done for those having bought RMMZ via Steam, is to give a positive review with solid reasons, like what I've given quite a while ago :)
But, maybe more can be done to further boost the review scores legitimately, apart from another obvious thing that resource makers can continue to make more and more awesome resources for the community :D

I've also briefly checked the NEGATIVE REVIEWS FROM STEAM, and here are the summary of all the points I've collected(which is by no means exhaustive):
Spoiler: ShowHide

1. The base price of RMMZ is too expensive compared to what it added and improved over RMMV(But they'd be positive for RMMZ if there will be a big sale)
2. RMMZ isn't even RMMVA, but just RMMV 1.7, because everything "new" in RMMZ are already provided by plugins in RMMV
3. RMMZ improved too little from RMMV, meaning that the RM franchise has become trapped in the past
4. The 3D effekseer doesn't work well with the RMMZ animations, because it's a 2D engine
5. The RMMZ RTP is worse than that of RMMV(images are ugly, audios are unpleasant to listen to, etc), and the former isn't compatible with the latter
6. There are still some unnecessarily hardcoded assumptions, like the tileset size still being fixed to 48
7. RMMZ doesn't work well when the screen size isn't 816 * 624(1280 * 720 can already cause the side view battler sprites to be mis-positioned to the left of the screen), like, ugly scaling of battler sprites
8. The RMMZ character generator still sucks so hard that the generated adults look like kids
9. There's no way to make porting RMMV animations to RMMZ an easy, simple and small task, because of effekseer
10. RMMZ still doesn't make good use of multiple CPU cores nor the GPU, causing inferior performance even with the Pixi v5 upgrades and other performance optimizations over RMMV
11. RMMZ only lets you use 4 map layers, which is far from being enough
12. The hardcoded limit of 2000 items per database type isn't high enough
13. The sprites are still hardcoded to using 3 frame per action
14. There's no way to make exporting to mobile platforms an easy, simple and small task, when RMMZ is advertised for optimized for such platforms
15. Many features that are provided by RMMZ plugins should've been done by RMMZ itself
16. The audio loading still isn't optimized in RMMZ, causing large audio files to have too long to load(and this issue already exists in RMMV and is well-known by the community for years)
17. The amount of resources including by the RTP still isn't large enough, and should've been much, much larger
18. While this engine advertise itself as easy enough for a child, it's not the case when you've to learn effekseer, which is a must to use RMMZ
19. An exported project can be as big as way more than 200MB in RMMZ, while similar projects in RMMV would've been just around 50MB, and 50MB is already too much
20. Sometimes the engine can just suddenly crash, like when clicking edit on a show text event, causing unexpected loss of progresses
21. The default RMMZ JavaScript codebase is so poorly-documented that documentation there is effectively nonexistent
22. The RMMZ is obviously very, very unpolished and just rushed for launch, and the current state of RMMZ is clearly an incomplete product
23. In general, the RMMZ plugins aren't as generous as the RMMV counterparts, because of the pricing, terms of use, and source code accessibility, and RMMZ is nothing without plugins
24. Enemy skill animations aren't displayed in front view battles
25. The battler sprites aren't animated enough, and they're behaving like static ones(no shadows, floating motions, etc)
26. RMMZ just isn't worth it before it has as many plugins as that of RMMV
27. Many improvements in RMMZ should've been implemented in RMMV
28. RMMZ should let you use either effekseer or the traditional RMMV like animations
29. The RM franchise has been working in the form of buying the engine with the use of many scripts/plugins from the same scripter/plugin developer(without him/her RM would be nothing), with tweaks of those scripts/plugins made, and some other scripts/plugins(that are compatible to those made by that particular scripter/plugin developer) from the other scripters/plugin developers to make games, but this formula no longer works in RMMZ, because of the successor of that particular scripter/plugin developers start making closed-source plugins in RMMZ(and some of them are paid too)

Please note that I'm just trying to summarize the points I've collected from negative Steam reviews, and it has nothing to do with whether I agree or disagree with any of them.

So, I'd like to open this post to collect ideas on some possible ways to make RMMZ to have overwhelming positive reviews, and this doesn't have to be limited to Steam, because I think later on there will be some other quantified reviews of comparable significance ;)
My RMVXA/RMMV/RMMZ scripts/plugins: http://rpgmaker.net/users/DoubleX/scripts/

KK20

Linking to other topics:
https://www.reddit.com/r/RPGMaker/comments/iwgmz9/what_can_be_done_to_make_rmmz_have_overwhelming/
https://forums.rpgmakerweb.com/index.php?threads/what-can-be-done-to-make-rmmz-to-have-overwhelming-positive-reviews.127639/

Echoing what everyone said already, there's nothing they can do other than to wait for time to pass by. MZ really was an underwhelming upgrade over MV as that is what it was designed to be--an upgrade. You really only get value out of it if you skipped MV entirely, which seems to not be the case with the majority of its users.

Other Projects
RPG Maker XP Ace  Upgrade RMXP to RMVXA performance!
XPA Tilemap  Tilemap rewrite with many features, including custom resolution!

Nintendo Switch Friend Code: 8310-1917-5318
Discord: KK20 Tyler#8901

Join the CP Discord Server!

Blizzard

I haven't tried MZ yet, but I can already agree with what a reddit user said:

QuoteFrankly, you listed 29 pretty valid reasons for it to have the score it currently has.

The product has to improve. No way around it.

All in all, that's the point of reviews.
Check out Daygames and our games:

King of Booze 2      King of Booze: Never Ever
Drinking Game for Android      Never have I ever for Android
Drinking Game for iOS      Never have I ever for iOS


Quote from: winkioI do not speak to bricks, either as individuals or in wall form.

Quote from: Barney StinsonWhen I get sad, I stop being sad and be awesome instead. True story.