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Posted: Sat May 05, 2007 7:18 pm
by Astral
Anyway for the quest/enemies I plan to make some sort of counterattack / weak or strong points, because this works well but I'll be able to implement it for both caster/fighters.

Example:
Monster Ice Golem: vulnerable to fire spells, but also to a flame sword

Or also quest related:
Iron door: you can open it with "open door" spell, with a thief, or bashing it open (but you'll need a very big strong orc to do it)

And so on, so I think you should be able to make your unique (at least from a RPG point of view) party of all warriors!
Cool! :P That is exactly what I wanted to know. I like how you are making this game, because from your examples its nice to know that you can beat an enemy or solve a quest in a variety of ways.

Albeit strange, I have played many kinds of RPGs with a solo warrior or a warrior-based party and have had more success and fun playing, than I did where I was forced to use a balanced party or a party where the warrior took a backseat.

Posted: Sat May 05, 2007 7:48 pm
by Ken_Goding
I'd like a fleet of fighter jets, please. We'll just nuke 'em all and it'll be over. :lol:

Posted: Sat May 05, 2007 8:13 pm
by KnockOut
jack1974 wrote: Example:
Monster Ice Golem: vulnerable to fire spells, but also to a flame sword

Or also quest related:
Iron door: you can open it with "open door" spell, with a thief, or bashing it open (but you'll need a very big strong orc to do it)

And so on, so I think you should be able to make your unique (at least from a RPG point of view) party of all warriors! 8)
What about my party of all psions? Oh wait there are no psions in the game :( Maybe eventually you could release a psion and bard expansion pack so those two classes can finally get the love they deserve.

Other ideas for door opening. I don't think a thief should have an open door spell. As spells are not something I'd imagine a thief to be using roleplaying wise. Thieves should pick locks.

I don't think wizards should have an open lock spell either as opening a door is too mundane a task for a wizard to be devoting his time to such a spell. Understanding a lock and finding the right way to open it without setting off a trap is not something I can imagine a spell doing as it is very complex.

I can understand a cleric praying to his god to open the door or a druid summoning a mouse to chew on the wires that support the trap but frankly I'm just sick of wizards with open lock! :end pet peeve:

But another matter regarding thieves and the issue astral mentioned is that sometimes you only want one thief for your party for traps. There should be some compelling reason to have more than one thief for your party(same with healers, etc.)

And yes of course a warrior should be able to open a door with brute strength. But maybe some doors require two warriors or two thieves or even six thieves!


Please don't fall into the trap of party creation going like this:

Okay I need one healer so I can heal my party after battle to avoid using too many ptions the best race for a healer is ice elf
Then I need one thief so I can unlock doors and open traps the best race for that is a wood elf
Then I need one warrior to tank and take all the damage so I'll pick an orc
Now I need a druid to buff all my party members so for that the best race is dark elf
Then I need a wizard to do all the damage and the best race is again a dark elf
Then to round it out I'll use another wizard since wizards are always the best class

So every game the optimal strategy would be to pick:

Ice elf healer
Wood elf thief
Orc Warrior
Dark Elf Druid
Dark Elf Wizard
Dark Elf Wizard

Party creation should go more like this:

I need two healers to effectively use the super-heal spell. I'll make one a dwarf to make use of the ancient dwarven spell that turns all ale into healing potions and I'll make the other an orc who can transcribe a glyph that makes all healing spells also do damage at the same time.
Maybe I'll even make a third healer and have him be an ice elf so he can freeze one of my party members and in this frozen state he can't be damaged and regenerates hit points

But then I won't have room for six thieves
One of which is an orc who knows how to make the ancient orc traps of arrows
And maybe I can make the second one an orc two because that other orc grew up in a different clan of orcs so he knows another art of arrow trap making and they can work together to make a super arrow trap
But then I also need a dark elf thief who can make darkness traps

And that's not even to mention the different ways that all the thieves and races work together to unlock doors

Arrrrggghhhh! This is so confusing.

That's how party selection should go. 8)

Posted: Sat May 05, 2007 8:21 pm
by jack1974
Wait I wrote badly, didn't mean the thief had a picklock spell but indeed that he could use picklocks to open the door.

What you say would probably be cool, even if against all the rules of existing RPG games :lol:

Well since I'm still on design stage I could actually delete a few races - but make them more detailed as you say.
I'm seriously thinking to do this... better add a new race later in an expansion pack, but with a completely new set of spells/skills.

Incredible you managed to change my mind... maybe! :shock:

Posted: Thu May 10, 2007 7:06 pm
by KnockOut
First off, yay! Yay for eliminating irrelevant race/class combos and increasing the relevant number of choices.

Now, there's one more source of inflation in RPGs and that's the dungeon. Usually there's a whole bunch of empty rooms and it takes forever to get back out of the dungeon(tower).

Unless, these excess rooms are incorporated somehow in tactics why would anyone build a tower with a whole bunch of empty rooms? If the boss has designed the tower wouldn't he design it to be able to get into and out of the tower as quickly as possible and to minimize the ability of intruders to get in.

I guess you could argue that the boss is a minotaur and likes nice inefficient walkways with a bunch of scattered monsters and treasures.

The upstairs and downstairs should be right next to each other. Make the upstairs require a key or thief(or thieves to open). Although, maybe the boss wouldn't want a key because it's annoying to have to keep opening doors.

Every room should have a guard monster/trap or both. No pointless rooms please. Having to explore a bunch of empty corridors is boring especially given that most RPGs now have an automap unless those corridors somehow are necessary for distance fighting.

Every room should have a purpose and I've said this before but every trap and monster should be more challenging then having to press the attack button for every character.

So less rooms/more quality.
Less monsters/more quality.
Less traps/more quality.

I don't want to have to play the game while I'm watching TV while I'm killing mundane monsters and autopressing buttons to get back to town.

P.S. Maybe your next blog entry could deal with the dungeon layout or town to better give suggestions.

Posted: Thu May 10, 2007 9:17 pm
by jack1974
First I'm still working on the races/classes, so is a bit early to talk about that
:lol:
For now I just made possible to create almost any race/class. A dwarf thief or wizard? sure. Of course wouldn't be able to cast so powerful spells maybe, but he could be more a battlemage than a wizard.
Everything in practice is skill based, like Oblivion, so the initial choices reflect what will be the intial skills level, and skill caps.

Ok, now about the dungeon layout I agree. I literally hate when in Diablo or other dungeon crawler you have to WASTE 15-20 minutes to get back to town every time because you don't have the "town portal" spell.
I am thinking what to do to solve this. Probably I can make a sort of "autowalk" to town, so you will still travel back to town by foot but will be done automatically by the CPU, and you'll be interrupted only if there will be any obstacles (maybe wandering enemy?) before getting back to town.

The argument about few but good - I'm not really sure about it, I liked the idea to kill 50 sewer rats to get to level 1 8)

Posted: Fri May 11, 2007 12:00 am
by KnockOut
jack1974 wrote:First I'm still working on the races/classes, so is a bit early to talk about that
:lol:
For now I just made possible to create almost any race/class. A dwarf thief or wizard? sure. Of course wouldn't be able to cast so powerful spells maybe, but he could be more a battlemage than a wizard.
Everything in practice is skill based, like Oblivion, so the initial choices reflect what will be the intial skills level, and skill caps.
What you could do regarding odd classes like dwarf thief or wizard is: make powerful items that only a dwarf thief or wizard can use, have one unique powerful spell for every race/class combination(ie. dwarves hate magic, so a dwarf wizard can have a powerful anti-magic spell that halves the damage done by enemy wizards and for a dwarf thief, dwarves might be too dumb to use their brain to unlock doors and disarm traps, but a dwarf thief may be the best at breaking down locked doors and smashing traps even better than a dwarven fighter who wouldn't train in such activities).

The danger with being skill based is that eventually as the game progresses all the classes become increasingly similar. At the end of the game any character shouldn't be able to do everything, they should be a lot better at their one trade.
jack1974 wrote: The argument about few but good - I'm not really sure about it, I liked the idea to kill 50 sewer rats to get to level 1 8)
Well, you can kill 50 sewer rats to get to level 1, but have the user face all 50 sewer rats at once!

If you're going to have random encounters, than you should consider having a time limit on the game. Too many RPGs have infinite resources eliminating strategy. If you have to complete the game within a time limit then that encourages replay so you have to beat your record. There could be changes to the town and tower over periods of time too.

Posted: Fri May 11, 2007 12:10 am
by Astral
If you're going to have random encounters, than you should consider having a time limit on the game. Too many RPGs have infinite resources eliminating strategy. If you have to complete the game within a time limit then that encourages replay so you have to beat your record. There could be changes to the town and tower over periods of time too.
This is a big turnoff for me. I hate being rushed! If I fail to react quickly I am penalized or even worse I have to restart from a certain point.

However, I can understand some people like the concept of timelimits (which for the life of me I can't figure out why). Therefore, if you do decide to implement a time limit please make that an option you can turn on and off.

I have enough time limits and deadlines in my real life and the last thing I need is one in a game in which I'm supposed to have fun and RELAX!

Posted: Fri May 11, 2007 6:47 am
by jack1974
I don't like time limit either. But isn't really a problem, can be an option only for "hardcore" playing mode 8)
Indeed I plan to make 2 difficulty levels: normal and hard. The normal will have no time limit and easier stuff in general, while the hard will have a time limit, less resources and so on.

About the classes/skills, I explained myself badly, as it is now each race has 2 deities, and those 2 deities define which spells they can use. So for example the dwarven one have really particular spells like creating magic weapons and healing, rather than raw nuke power.

And the skills will have caps - so for example while it will be possible to have a dwarf wizard, his skills in some areas will never be so high as a ice elf. But still if you want you can play it 8)

Posted: Fri May 11, 2007 3:06 pm
by KnockOut
jack1974 wrote:I don't like time limit either. But isn't really a problem, can be an option only for "hardcore" playing mode 8)
Indeed I plan to make 2 difficulty levels: normal and hard. The normal will have no time limit and easier stuff in general, while the hard will have a time limit, less resources and so on.
Risk versus reward. I don't like the idea of a hard mode with no extra rewards. If I'm going to play hard I want to be rewarded with better treasure, special cutscenes, more experience, etc.