User blog:Meta07/Steps of a conception

Hi! Today I'll share all the steps to make a proper conception to avoid crappy conceptions in the future! If you follow these steps closely, I hope your conception will improve significantly!

Step 1: Idea
This is the step where an idea sparks inside your head and tell you "Oh, I should make something that...". Your conception may not even be truly born yet, without a name, an image inside your head or even a proper property, just the idea of making something original. This is the quickest step of all, happening in only a tenth of the second, but it's still very important because it's the step where your conception's most basic form is born! This step is also where you should put your "conception" inside your Upcoming Conceptions list.

Step 2: Conception
This is the step when you actually start focusing on your conception, giving it a name, imagine its appearance inside your head, and concluding on what it will do. Still, after this step, your conception is still only the most basic one and doesn't have much things to it yet (e.g. you make a tower but don't know what its upgrades should do yet), but it starts becoming a proper idea and make you focus into it more to complete it.

Step 3: Refinement
This is the step where you complete every properties of your conception (e.g. making all the upgrades for a tower, imagining all the attacks, health and speed of a boss, etc.). After this step, it's pretty safe already to publish your conception, but if you want your conception to be memorable and epic, you should follow the next steps. Also, this step is usually the hardest of all in terms of mental work!

Step 4: Visualization
This is the step where you look at your conception again and see how it will do if it's actually put into the game. Will it make sense? Will an upgrade make it a dead-end? Can it really be used with the in-game environment? Will it make no sense if something in the game happens? If you find a dead-end anywhere when you're visualizing, you should make up a mechanic to fix it instantly! This step is more important than it seems, but people usually ignore it!

Step 5: Art
Now you can do this step or not, it's up to you, but a conception with a nice image is always more popular and also the image alone can give the viewers a sense that your conception is more epic than it actually is! For pro conceptors who always want their conceptions to be the best (like me...), this is usually the step that takes the most time of all, even many times longer than all the other steps combined! Also, if you want, you can make a soundtrack for your conception too, but it's the most tiring thing to do with a conception so don't do that if you think you're not good enough yet, honestly...

Step 6: Description
This is the step where you press "Create a page" and write down your conception. In this stage, you'll surely find some new minor flaws or suddenly find a way to make your conceptions cooler while you're writing it down. Most importantly, this is also the stage where you have to watch out for your words and work with stats and numbers to finish your conception. This is, of course, an utmost important step!

Step 7: Balance
This is the step where you look back and work with numbers and stats once again. Here, you'll price your conception and its upgrades, determining its range and firerate, etc. if it's a tower, or determining the damage an attack does, the amount of HP, the exact speed, etc. if it's a blimp and so on. Now DON'T rush on this step, because it's the most important step to give you your Balance score! Doing this step poorly will surely leads to a very OP or UP conception! After completing this step, your conception is all ready to publish!

Step 8: Improvement
This is the last step, and actually a lifetime step, if I would say so myself. After you've published your conception, this is when you look at the criticism and fix your conception when needed in order to make it better, or to implement a newly made Gameplay Mechanic to it. This is usually considered not compulsory by most people, and actually in some cases doesn't do anything much for your conception itself, but this step is the dominant step to help the admin (hey, that's me! ^^) respect you and consider you a great conceptor!