I'll say go for it. It's a reasonable investment and if it doesn't make any money, that's a risk that you likely can manage. Though you're hoping to make a bunch of money out of it, plan instead to make the whole thing a learning experience.

I have played a ton of games that I thought were absolute pieces of crap thrown together in an afternoon by a jr. high student. I make comments to my self about what a ridiculous waste of time it is and how I can't believe that someone actually permitted it on their website for download. And then I think about how I haven't even put any crap out there myself.

Make something. Put it out there. Learn from the experience. Repeat.

"make an rpg" is actually the job of a game developer. It takes likely years

Hypothetically speaking, I could:

1. Buy RPG Maker MV for $80

2. Craft a storyline better than your typical mobile game, taking 3 whole seconds

3. Make a RPG using premade assets

4. Throw in a couple of songs not in the kit for flavor

5. Release it on the App Store, because you can legally release games made with the kit even using the kit's assets AFAIK - just read the terms

6. Probably make a thousand dollars or more, since the premade assets would be up-to-snuff quality, and since you're really not competing with much, even among other people who used RPG Maker

What are the flaws in this idea? It sounds downright evil and diabolical, because most of us or at least me have it embedded in our brains to actually try harder than a kit like RPG Maker, even if we fail badly.....

Yes you could absolutely do all of this apart from (as already pointed out by others) number 6. You could handcraft your own games engine and spend thousands on assets and still not even make a thousand dollars.

The reason is discoverability. There are tens of thousands of garbage games released every day so the chances of enough people finding yours are slim.

Also the majority of people who use the App store are NOT gamers they are just people who want something to waste a little time with. They actually enjoy Candy Crush and Clash of Clans and actually prefer to spend in app purchases to get in game rewards rather than putting the effort in. Coming up with a well crafted story is a bit of a waste of time because having to follow your story arc would actually be annoying for somebody who wants to just pull their phone out and tap the screen a couple of times before continuing to get on the bus.

But could you actually make money from the relative niche group of real games players on the App Store who would like a real RPG using RPG maker assets?

Well yes you could and there are already dozens of developers doing this but, they don't make a thousand dollars per game. They make a cookie cutter game template that they can tweek the story and assets and get about fifty to a hundred dollars a game and release a new game every week.

If you want to make thousands of dollars you need to invest in original assets, a good story, shit tons of marketing and build up a loyal fan base before the game is released and make a decent quality product. Oh and you also need a lot of luck.

Hypothetically speaking, I could:

1. Buy RPG Maker MV for $80

2. Craft a storyline better than your typical mobile game, taking 3 whole seconds

3. Make a RPG using premade assets

4. Throw in a couple of songs not in the kit for flavor

5. Release it on the App Store, because you can legally release games made with the kit even using the kit's assets AFAIK - just read the terms

6. Probably make a thousand dollars or more, since the premade assets would be up-to-snuff quality, and since you're really not competing with much, even among other people who used RPG Maker

What are the flaws in this idea? It sounds downright evil and diabolical, because most of us or at least me have it embedded in our brains to actually try harder than a kit like RPG Maker, even if we fail badly.....

Let me list just the first few flaws that come to mind:

1. Coming up with a better story than average will certainly take more than 3 seconds. Are RPG story often quite... ehr... "limited"? Subjective, but I could agree in some cases. You can BET though that there is a reason why they are.

Lets just say, if YOU think the story is great, doesn't mean you find more than one guy that thinks the story is great. Subjectivity and all....

2. You will not make 1000 of dollars just like that. Not with games, and especially not in the mobile app stores.

To make money you first need an idea how to monetize. Premium games have a hard time nowadays in the app stores. Want to charge 1$ for your game? Good luck competing against the free to play games that look and feel much more premium than your 1$ game.

Then the whole mobile sector has become a shark ponds where only the big and greedy can earn good money. Everyone else is either lucky, or EXTREMLY cunning to even be able to pay the bills from the money earned there. It might be ironic, but it seems like the traditional platforms like PC or consoles have become a safer playground for Indies lately.

3. Using premade assets will not make your game feel more premium. Quite contrary. You can bet dozens of other geniuses like you had the same idea, and you compete with dozens of copycat looking RPGs now. They might have different stories, but the LOOK the same. Which to many people nowadays is a clear "no buy"... Steam gamers are complaining like mad about the RPGMaker Copycat games to a degree that even Indies that came up with good, original games have to fight the toxiticity.

4. Game development is NEVER quick and easy. If you don't believe, just try it yourself. I bet you will not get even a working prototype running before you quite with this attidute.

But really, go on, try it....

5. Maybe the biggest point of all... visibility. Nobody will buy your game if he hasn't heard of it. Just putting a Youtube video online is not cutting it anymore, ESPECIALLY if your game looks as coypcat as you describe it, and it is built with the love and care you seem to be ready to invest (none, to be precise).

Yep, utterly possible... and it's probably happened.

Yep, utterly possible... and it's probably happened.

Apart from the monetary part most probably.

That might have worked out in the early days on steam, when there wasn't a thousand people flooding the store already with RPGMaker Copycat games... or the early days of the App Stores, when even the "I am rich" App still got 2 sales apparently (an app that did nothing and was sold for 999$, for whoever doesn't remember the early iOS days).

Nowadays, you need to be way more professional to actually get even thousands of bucks in sales (tousands of bucks for a 10$ game means 100's of sales, and for a 1$ mobile game 1000's of sales)... you don't earn that much money with a premium game "by accident", you need a very good plan, and its a ton of work.

Hypothetically speaking, I could:

1. Buy RPG Maker MV for $80

2. Craft a storyline better than your typical mobile game, taking 3 whole seconds

3. Make a RPG using premade assets

4. Throw in a couple of songs not in the kit for flavor

5. Release it on the App Store, because you can legally release games made with the kit even using the kit's assets AFAIK - just read the terms

6. Probably make a thousand dollars or more, since the premade assets would be up-to-snuff quality, and since you're really not competing with much, even among other people who used RPG Maker

What are the flaws in this idea? It sounds downright evil and diabolical, because most of us or at least me have it embedded in our brains to actually try harder than a kit like RPG Maker, even if we fail badly.....

1: sounds reasonable.

2: your post probably took longer and itself lacks sustenance.

3: Doable.

4: Doable

5: Doable

6: Nice imagination, and just going off the smuggness of your post not even going to come close. I forsee the only person even seeing your game on the app store, being the person that approves it to be up on the app store. Just cause they're mobile games doesnt mean they're a piece of cake.

Sorry if [...]

I am between the skill level of making the next 3D game I envision, which will probably turn out bad due to it being too much for one person like myself, and mastering the RPG Maker program, actually maybe producing a good game with it. My question is, what should I go for?

This is a better question, but harder to answer.

Developing games is relatively easy. Once you've mastered the steps you can work as a game developer for your full career.

What to develop and how to develop your skills is more difficult.

Should you break out and make your own business? Unless you've got a solid business plan (with realistic market research, development costs and funding, marketing costs and funding, a series of products rather than a single game, and results options including financial success, financial failure, and breaking even) and some experience in the industry, probably not since it is likely to fail.

Should you master a different area of game development? If you'd like. Which area? That is up to you.

Steam gamers are complaining like mad about the RPGMaker Copycat games to a degree that even Indies that came up with good, original games have to fight the toxiticity.

http://store.steampowered.com/app/440540

http://steamcommunity.com/app/440540/discussions/

Soul comes through.

Still takes a ton of effort though.

I'm not familiar with RPG Maker MV or what's possible to do with it. I haven't had the occasion to use an RPG Maker product since 2002. If little has changed since RPG Maker 2000, I doubt you'll make a game that can earn much in sales (possibly, with a top notch story, you could make some money by inserting ads), but based on other replies it seems MV is a much more adaptable product.

I can tell you that using the assets that ship with the product is probably going to make people not want to try the game.
But using the assets that ship with the product to develop the game, and then replacing them with custom assets towards the end of development, might solve a lot of the collaboration headaches that kill many projects in their infancy.

I feel like the heart of your question is, "is it better to use this tool to simplify the game development experience, or to improve my own skills to the point where I can make a game of equal quality by myself?" Based on the tone of your initial post, I feel like you already lean against the tool, so I think you already have your answer and just want confirmation. But I don't know you - I can't confirm which way is best for you.

If you find the aspects of game development that this tool will do for you to be either enjoyable or interesting, then maybe you shouldn't use the tool. If you find them to be tedious or too difficult, then maybe you should use the tool.
If your goal is to develop the game rapidly, and this tool would enable you to do so, then maybe you should use the tool. If you feel like there's no hurry, or that the tool will not hasten development significantly, then maybe you have no reason to use the tool.

Also, just in general I don't see the appeal of epic RPGs on iOS; I think it's silly to expect me to "game" seriously on my phone with a 6 inches screen and touch controls, and when you look at it, a lot of big companies (lol Sega) broke their neck on mobile platforms, thinking it had place for "true" games. Personally, I have owned Final Fantasy Dimensions on my Android phone for two years, and I am a huge fan of the classic Final Fantasy games, and I consider FFD this to be the best game titled "Final Fantasy" since FFX-1... and yet I still prefer playing Solitaire than Final Fantasy on my phone. (In fact I wish I could just play FFD on my PC.) I just don't care about "serious" gaming on my mobile phone, I want to play quick games on that platform. Things like Three!, Solitaire, Angry Birds, etc. So I'm not going to buy your RPG Maker game knowing that I didn't even finish Final Fantasy Dimensions... And I don't care about your epic storyline on my tiny mobile phone screen, I don't have the attention span for it when I'm playing on my phone. You could have the next Lord of the Ring or a story about a distant future where bionic toilets have overrun humans after a zombie invasion and it would be the same to me. Perhaps other gamers have more tolerance for tiny screens than I do, but to me gaming on iOS is a joke. Maybe I would on an iPad Pro but at that price I would put a Titan X in my PC instead.

On my phone, I wouldn't bother looking for a high quality enjoyable game, I just want something to kill the few minutes while I'm waiting for an appointment, or my shift to start, etc.
But on my tablet - which I only use at home, and pretty much only for games and facebook, I would LOVE an epic RPG that takes me dozens of hours to complete. I'm always looking for something with story quality similar to Chrono Trigger, Final Fantasy, or even Dragon Quest. But I hate paying for games on my tablet - mostly because I have no guarantee of refund if the game doesn't run well, or the story is lame, or the game is too short/too easy to get my money's worth, and it's hard to trust other's ratings of games (some of the top rated games are just mindlessly easy knockoffs offering nothing over the original) - so I probably wouldn't pay for this generic-looking game the OP is proposing to make, even if everyone else rated it 5 stars.