My understanding is this: Each feature has footprint and a benefit. The larger and more expensive the feature, the larger its footprint, but also the larger its benefit. In fact, the size of the feature’s footprint is directly proportional to the size of its benefit. So having 4 little cheap features turned on would benefit your game just as much having a single large feature. A good example is in Gamplay. Joystick, Gamepad, Mouse and Steering Wheel all have a benefit of 1. “Character Progression” has a benefit of 4. Having all 4 of those cheap features is the same as having just the more expensive one. Further, if you turn on Character progression and one of the others, then you have 5 benefit points.
The more and larger features you add, the larger their collective footprint becomes until the footprint becomes too much for the amount of time you are allocating to that game element. It is at that point that you see the % sign appear, showing you what % of your feature benefit is being wasted because it can’t fit.
There is no real harm in having that %, as it doesn’t make your game worse. The only harm is that you are spending money on those extra features, but not getting the full benefit from them.
The trick is to adjust your sliders to squeeze in as many features as you can…without violating the preferences that your chosen genre has. Moving your sliders a little to squeeze in one more feature (or at least reduce the % number a little) while still obeying the genre’s preferences will give your game quality a bit of a boost. But breaking a slider preference for the sake of squeezing in more features will ultimately do more harm than good to your game.
When you get to the point where ALL of your game aspects are starting to hit their % caps, it is time to move up a game size. Large and AAA games can handle more and more features given the same slider choices. When you start researching the big 80RP+ features, it is time to move up to large games as most Medium games won’t be able to fit a 80RP feature, even if that aspect is one you want to focus on.
My rule of thumb is as follows: Enable features until I see a % sign appear, then see if I can raise my slider a little to just barely make that % vanish (meaning it is operating at 100%). If I can do that without violating my genre’s slider preferences, great! if not, I’ll leave it at the %.
At the very least, seeing a % sign means that adding any additional features will be 100% wasted, so you can add them until you get the % to ensure every bit of that aspect is feature boosted.
