It works this way in Loren already, after you pick a lot of joking, forceful or friendly, your character will speak accordingly in several situations.

It was quite some work though, so not sure about the sequel. I like also the Fallout system, using some stats to unlock specific dialogues. We'll see, the new writer is still playing the game to get to know more about it, takes a while

I enjoyed the fact that the tone of player character changed according to responses but let me add this: I have mentioned somewhere earlier that I would like to see references to player character's class during special events between characters, but it would be great to see them also in normal dialogues and in the middle of problem solving during quests. I only wish that these things are at least considered. (Yes, I understand these require much and they may not be possible.)



Then, my next suggestions:



Player character in grave danger. Some of us might remember how Loren got poisoned by a goblin assassin. This triggered a rather interesting moment where player character used their knowledge of first aid and poisons to quickly prepare an antidote and saved our lovely heroine. I believe that this happened during Loren romance. I would like to see a grave event like that made against the player character this time. The situation could be a poisoning, kidnapping or perhaps a battle where player character receives a grave injury, after which player character would be unconscious for few days. During that time it would be great if the love interest would be beside themselves and/or watching over the player character. It would show that they care. Now, I am not certain if this event would take place at the end of the game or in the middle of it, but it could be something worth considering.



How does love interest see the player character? So far in romances in Loren 1 only the player character (or actually the narrator) has ever stated what they find attractive from the love interest. I would like the partners to state what they find attractive from the player character as well when they are together/alone. Myrth is obviously interested in Saren, but why? What was it in Saren that made her heart beat? Would this revelation ruin the magic?

It works this way in Loren already, after you pick a lot of joking, forceful or friendly, your character will speak accordingly in several situations.

Yeah I said that, but does it actually make a difference to the story? Can a forceful Saren accomplish something a friendly Saren can't? As far as I understood it, it was just different paths always leading to the same goals.

Grodul: yes we always consider/read all the suggestions. Then of course have to make compromises, to have the game out in a decent timeframe

The two suggestions are quite interesting indeed

It works this way in Loren already, after you pick a lot of joking, forceful or friendly, your character will speak accordingly in several situations.

Yeah I said that, but does it actually make a difference to the story? Can a forceful Saren accomplish something a friendly Saren can't? As far as I understood it, it was just different paths always leading to the same goals.

Well that would be a bit too much I think, would lead to a supercomplex branching story. I'd rather have specific skills, Fallout style:

Grunt: "You shall not pass"

PC: "Look at him menacingly [strength check: 50]"

PC: "Distract him with a potion [alchemy check: 75]"

PC: "I could be grateful to you later [charisma check: 99]"



As said will need to talk with writer and see what he is more comfortable with. The fact that he is a big RPG player will help brainstorm and decide the most feasible path for us

Thank you, Jack and everyone else. My mind is at ease.

I guess I am shooting myself in the foot a bit with this post, but the system wasn't so powerful it branched the plot. Let's take that intimidation scene again. If you were a forceful character, it succeeded, you got the item. If you weren't, you had two options. The first was to stab the merchant right then and there, in public, to show him you're serious, which got you the item but also a lot of bad blood from most party members (something like that anyway). Or you could steal the item in the night, but then you had to play that through. If you were forceful, it was the threat, and then the item was yours, done! Probably got a bit of bad blood still, but not nearly as much.



So the balance is like: Make the personality matter to the point that you can get something out of it, without that something being so impactful that a forceful Saren plays a totally different game from a friendly Saren.

Ah OK yes then is different. I thought you meant whole different paths depending on the personality

Boy, am I late to the party or what? V:



I won't take any offense if none of these suggestions pull through, since I understand it's a lot to ask for. 'v'



I personally enjoyed the scenes in Loren 1 where your love interest would interact with you during the main story, such as when you're stuck in the rafters and then whoever you had the most hearts with at that time would catch/comment or when you're confronting Mesphit and your LI will yank you back. It always puts a big smile on my face, eheh...

But I know there are a lot more romances this time around and that means a lot more writing to do.



Also, regarding Saren/Elenor's background and Personal Quests, I was wondering if we could have a Personal Quest regarding it where they could grab their LI for/maybe the whole team. It always bothered me when I play games and everyone is always coming up to the PC for help, but the PC him/herself never needs any help or always tries to tackle things on their own.



(Also, I'm pretty much an advocate for everything that comes out of Grodul's keyboard, because I'm a huge sucker for the romance and writing in Loren.)

Another latecomer to the party here!



A gallery of the background and character/pose art would be cool. I remember in Loren 1 some characters had the occasional zoomed shots--and Jul had a zoom&pan shot with dramatic music (twice!). I thought it would be great to be able to browse the rest of the characters with that sort of movement and resolution (N'mar family, huzzah!).



And one thing that I thought would make things feel "alive". Characters starting their own "conversation scenes" more frequently than in Loren 1. Integrating those scenes here or there could, I think, be a little more immersive than having a backlog of Campground conversations that you can build up and spam though all at once. For instance, all the personal quests require you to start the conversation--even if the narration suggests that the other character is the one who came to speak to you (e.g. Amukiki).



Loren 1 had you reach the character stats/eq screen via the campground screen. But if the Camp Conversation screen and Stats/EQ screen were reached through different buttons, it could be easier to set up triggers for these scenes without interfering with general gameplay, maybe? Head to camp when you want to chat; chat enough with a character and when you go to camp later, one of the scenes will trigger. I think romance scenes had something like this, but it would be the same thing used more broadly, I guess.



That's all that came to mind for now!

Thanks for the suggestions. For sure integrating more the conversation scenes with the main plot is great, however is also quite time consuming to write In Loren was especially because you didn't always had all the characters with you. In my other games like Planet Stronghold was easier since 99% of the time all the characters would follow you (so wasn't possible to randomly trigger a conversation when a character was away).



Never thought about the high-res zoomable images but should be simple to add

Never thought about the high-res zoomable images but should be simple to add

Huzzah! I was sure someone would have asked for something like that already--took me a little while to browse the thread and check. Seemed natural: story mode; soundtrack; gallery. Now that I think about it, a lot of nice extra features were already there!



From here on out, I'm just tossing ideas around.



With story mode and a lot of characters, you could sometimes end up with six, seven, or even all of your characters leveling up at once. I remember this happening when I received 1000 quest XP and it could take a while to handle. If Story Mode aims to emphasize the VN element, maybe there could be a faster way to auto-assign skills/stats?



If we want to keep things open and give players a lot of power to customize, then maybe individual characters could have a button "auto assign skills: on/off" and "auto assign stats: on/off". That way, if some people just want to skip a few battles but still adjust stats/skills, they can. But if they want to just zoom through battles/leveling and read the story, they can set everything to auto and do that.

Thanks for the suggestions. For sure integrating more the conversation scenes with the main plot is great, however is also quite time consuming to write In Loren was especially because you didn't always had all the characters with you. In my other games like Planet Stronghold was easier since 99% of the time all the characters would follow you (so wasn't possible to randomly trigger a conversation when a character was away).

Loren definitely has a lot of characters to work with. I can see how integrating too much with the main plot would make things really messy or time-consuming.