JFSOCC

I agree, although I've read Mort several times as well. Fantastic book. I just finished David Wong's This Book Is Full Of Spiders - Seriously, Dude, Don't Touch It which lacked the braincracking insanity* of its predecessor (John Dies At The End) but was still highly entertaining and had a much stronger structure. Still a rare example of horror comedy that exhibits both horror and comedy. Next on the list is Yahtzee "Zero Punctuation" Croshaw's new novel "Jam". * I have to agree, sometimes a little mary sue. I excuse it because it is supposedly an epic character, one of those once every few generation people. and he has a fair amount of character flaws. (such as not being overly concerned about making enemies)I wouldn't say the story could be quickly summed up, however, any more than any other book could. He's narrating his life to his biographer.

Well I haven't made any mods, I've helped others making theirs, but I don't desire a job in the game developer world, well, maybe narrative design.

Those are only fun if it's people you're hunting down, not animals/non-sapient monsters, and you get the option to help said people by letting them go, paying off their debts, and/or proving their innocence instead of killing/capturing them. Like in the KotOR games. in other words, not just a filler quest. but one that is worked out and is fun.There's a difference between filler quests and small, low powered quests. One is to provide padding by adding a lot of mediocre content, the other is to fill the game with diverse and cared for, but not always hyper-big content, to provide better pacing.

I would enjoy it if not every ruins had a dungeon, cult or something attached to it. Sometimes a place falls into disrepair, the people leave because maintainance becomes impossible or too expensive. There have been plenty of empty ruins in RL. That said, it wouldn't be much of a game if most ruins had nothing associated with it. I'm a builder at heart. If I can rebuild a ruins as a project (possibly as stronghold) I'd probably enjoy it. clearing the roads towards it, repairing or building bridges, guarding the roads with paid soldiers... etc.

I've truly done my best with formatting. I think a lot would be lost if I did a TL;DR, but here goes.TL;DR: A map with (large)parts randomly generated, with access to special quests as a reward for exploring.

You're free to use it. I wouldn't have suggested it otherwise. Let's just say I release this idea under a creative commons license About the implementation. Yes, It would probably require that at least part of the game had a different style map. It certainly is possible in certain engines, Warcraft 3 had a type of map where trees could be cut by peons/peasants, and a regrow mechanic seems just to be placing those trees back (with an animation, of coure) So yeah, you'd probably need a base map, and lots of tree-shaped props with animations that have them grow or be removed. and then you just populate a map with these. That's the trade-off, but I think that would be OK for certain sections, like the wilderness. I also believe that the quests themselves could take place on pre-made maps, which would load (possibly seamlessly, if technology allows) after following a trail towards it. So these spots, while present in the wilderness, would be distinct from it.

no time limits for me, thank you. I take my sweet time playing.

I'm currently reading Guns, Germs and Steel by Jared Diamond, after having read Collapse ages ago. (both are recommended) I'm also currently reading The Black Swan by Nassim Nicholas Taleb I'm also reading I, claudius by Robert Graves. Though I only progress intermittingly in each. I'm eagerly awaiting the next Patrick Rothfuss book for some hard-core highbrow fantasy. but that's probably 2 years away, at the rate he writes.

Ok I apologize, it was a mild troll. I think my stance on save scumming was clear before: I wish to encourage good behaviour without forbidding or punishing behaviour like exploiting and save scumming. I think it is impossible to prevent save scumming (hence my example) and other ways to exploit it. But an engaging game would not entice you to save scum. (that said, it's hard to get that precisely right.)

"make mods" best advice ever.

in an recent interview it was mentioned that you have to be ok, as a developer, that people will not see all content you create. So I am not worried about that being a consideration.

No idea if it is easy to create. I would make it open in the sense that you can enter it at any time. but the idea is that going back later would lead to different content and encounters. The forest/world is vast and you wouldn't find your way back without landmarks. Quite, that's one of the reasons I started thinking about a solution. I'd like to add that I forgot some possible content for #2. You could restore bridges, find (tame?) animals, come across bones, natural obstacles such as quicksand, things like that. the wilderness without the wisps would not be content free, but the wisps part are the more significant quests and encounters, and thus they should stick out.

just because a quest is a side-quest doesn't mean it has to be half-assed. I say no to filler quests.

if you go off-road, yes. And I'll leave it in the middle how safe the roads will be, but significantly safer, at least.

Why are classes different? One answer is so that you can have distinct playstyles for different players. Does this limit the player? Yes. deliberately. Is that a bad thing? Depends. I wish to role-play my character and that does mean I want a fair amount of customization of how I play him or her, I also want my character to be distinct enough from other characters that we don't overlap much in how we play. I'm fine with limiting backstab bonus damage to rogues, or making it higher for them than other characters. I usually play my rogue character as a jack of all trades who is weak in combat, as long as I can keep doing that, I'll be satisfied with the rogue.

I'd just copy the save and place it in a different folder for retrieval.

overly bombastic battle music in an easy battle complete destroys immersion since the tone of the music belies the tone of the encounter. It's one of those gripes I have that I know come from good intentions on the devs' side. (obviously want to make battles more epic)

OK, I worked on this quite a bit, and I'm a bit nervous to throw it out there, but here goes. *note, I will be using some DnD terms, but naturally these would be different ingame. Premise: Of all the RPG games I’ve played, many have failed to deliver on the exploration elements in the wilderness, relying on set-pieces and tedious random encounters. Going into the wilderness, if at all possible, consisted of ticking off certain boxes “quest complete” and moving on to the next area. This leads to the wild areas to be empty of meaningful content pretty quickly, except for said random encounters. I have in an inspired moment come up with a suggestion which would hope to accomplish the following: Encourage exploration. Increase diversity of wilderness content. Make the world come alive with emergent gameplay. Avoid undesired content for those who simply wish to pass through wilderness areas without being delayed. Have more mechanical uses for ranger skills like "wilderness survival" without making them gimmicky. The idea is divided into sections. The road. The wilderness The "wisps" and forest lights. 1. The road. Players can decide whether or not they wish to remain on the road. The roads are well travelled and (relatively) safe. If a player wishes to continue on without exploring, all he or she has to do is remain on the road. Nothing (or little) will happen. 2. The wilderness. Players can venture off the road. When this is chosen wilderness survival skills will be useful. This might require some creative programming. The idea is that when venturing far enough from the road, the map becomes generated, and finding the road again may or may not be possible. Players would walk around in forest covered areas. (one example) And an area around the party would be cut away and navigable. A wilderness survival or similar skill would determine how fast surrounding foliage is cut (becomes navigable), how fast the track regrows behind the player, and how large a radius around the party is cut. This is to give the player the notion he is walking around in a vast forest (or other wilderness) without permanent landmarks. In the wilderness several things could be uncovered: Players may come across hostile spawns, goblin camps, forest traps, hidden treasure. These would be few enough between that a player wouldn't just stumble across it immediately. Returning to the road would be possible using fast travel. (and perhaps a high enough navigation skill) However, this would not be possible if the player started following a trail of... 3. The wisps and forest lights. The wisps are just a generic name for what are in essence may different types of guiding lights. These lights are different in shape, colour, and behaviour, but stretch out emergent in front of a player's party. Wisps are come across randomly, and should be fairly uncommon. (but common enough that any adventuring party will come across a few at least during their game if they choose to visit the wilderness areas) Wisps lead places, different wisps lead different places. Once a party has decided to follow a trail of wisps for a few moments, the following happens. Fast travel back to the road becomes impossible, you'll have to see it through. (you can choose to not follow a trail in order to avoid that. The game will have to register whether or not you were following it) Losing the trail of wisps (distance of your closest party member to the trail becomes too great) ends in quest failure. No encounters with monsters or loot, you're following a trail and it leads somewhere, you won't be distracted. Wilderness survival (or similar skill) will tell players the following: No or low skill: Forest lights exist and they lead places. Low to intermediate skill: following lights can be dangerous. Low to intermediate skill: some lights are worth following. Intermediate skill: Different types of lights lead to different encounters. (I'd love for this to be randomized for each game so no assumptions can be made) Intermediate to high skill: This type of light leads to this encounter. High skill: These are the types of lights and these are the types of encounters they lead to. Upon following these ghost lights, wisps, foxlights, forest lilghts, glowing mushrooms, whatever, players will be led to an encounter relevant to the type of light-trail they followed. I've come up with a few quest ideas, but naturally many more are possible. Upon completion or failure of one of these quests (which would be removed from the questpool afterwards regardless) players are returned to the road. Possible outcomes for following a trail: "spiritual" Players are led to a druidic ritual in a grove, if there are druids in the party, they can assist, if not the player will be able to observe the ritual and guard the druids (or not) as they complete the ritual. If no PC druids participate, you'll see the death of said druids after ritual is completed. "spiritual" players come across a scrying pool in the forest. It shows the player one random vision. (multiple instances possible) "spiritual" players come across a stone henge circle, players with a high knowledge of the arcane can use the circle to learn a powerful ability, alternatively the site could be destroyed with disastrous consequences (deliberately or not). Ideally each site offers multiple ways to experience the encounter. So a stone circle might be seen differently by a wizard than a ranger, or cleric. "trickster lights" leads no-where, party eventually admits they are lost. "trickster lights" leads to a clearing where if the party rests, they are set upon by enemies. "trickster lights" leads to a nymph in her pool, she may or may not torment the party with riddles or tricks. "trickster lights" leads to an Elven feast. When trying to enter the feast clearing, it vanishes, after 3 encounters players are confronted and asked why they keep barging in. multiple outcomes possible, one of which is that they join the feast. If they do, they're subtly (I'm counting on you MCA!) enticed to stay. "oh, right before old george here was about to tell you this ancient piece of lore!" staying might lead to more information, trinkets, but eventually players would figure out they're being duped into staying. After they leave camp, they'll find the road again, alternatively they might decide to stay in camp long enough that they wake up in a compromised position with no elves in sight, leading the party to wonder if it was ever real. "firelights(encounter lights)" leads to a monster to be defeated "firelights" stumble across a bandit camp "homelights" lead to settlements, either hermit houses, the house of a powerful witch or wizard, maybe a sapient monster (I always enjoyed the DnD monster manual description of a Rakshaka, living in a swamp.) You may or may not find yourself welcome. "unresolved issue" lights lead to ancient wrongs you might be able to right, or at least learn about. I've some other quests I thought of shortlisted, I'll just name the title, as I am sure you can think of interesting encounters. "Dead town possession" "wizard's mighty spell" "angry dead"(maybe unlikely what with the soul mechanic) "zombie swamp"(idem ditto) "hermit" "wandering traveller" "mysterious mist" "firefly display" "ancient battle" "ancient ruins" "death pond" "fake trail" "dragon's den" I believe these encounters and quests would be much more memorable because: They'll be your main focus, you won't be busy doing other quests in the meantime. You found them through exploration, making acquiring these quests a reward in it's own. They'll be unique. These quests are not forced on you, you will only do them out of a desire to see more of the world. You can't go back, the experience will be all the more mysterious and special for it. They reward players for different play-styles in different ways, the wilderness lore/survival trait makes your decisions more informed, but you can also choose to randomly follow trails. So a city-bred party may make more mistakes and find themselves lost once or twice, while still having had an interesting thing occur. Furthermore they remove a nuisance from the game for those players who don't enjoy random encounters. They'll be random, but unforced. The player gets to decide how much of this content he or she feels up to doing at any moment. Want to go from A to B? you can. Want to mindlessly or mindfully stumble upon bandits, goblins and treasure chests? You can. And do you wish to get lost in the wilderness and find some special content? You can. What do you think?

http://extra-credits.net/articles/finding-myself-in-the-wastes/

friendly fire from non-aoe spells.

There was a powerful thunderstorm at the top of Mount Everest on the day I was born, which also happened to be where I was born. I didn't cry, I smiled. as soon as this happened a double rainbow appeared, clearing away the powerful thunderclouds and shining the sun. I whistled an Eagle's cry, and a majestic Golden Eagle came to carry me down to my domain. That day, all sorts of records where broken. People claimed that they felt more energetic and happy than before. Butterflies followed in the wake of my passing, and crops have been said to have grown particularly large bounty that year. All the sick in hospitals within a 2000 mile radius of my birthplace suddenly got better, and the Dalai Lama himself mentioned a "Great Leader" was born.

Morrigan was trying hard to be Kreia, she sometimes even succeeded, which made her the most memorable character of that game.

A scarverger hunt is where you hunt scarves. a little miniquest where you need to steal, beg, or take the scarves of certain npc's in town. when you have all of them you'll be the envy of every man in town... In KOTOR2 you had sections in which certain party members had their own side missions. Atton getting a drink/assassinated, Mira going to the 'tar. I really liked those side quests, but not that they were forced. I'd be nice if there was some sort of mechanic where you could click "Gather information" and the party would split up, each npc offering different ways to get information. So a rogue might eavesdrop somewhere, a bard would go into a bar, have a drink with some of the fellows, play a little music, and loosen some tongues, the fighter offers to infiltrate the guard, until he knows what he needs. the wizard will consult the academy, etc... That has never been done before (to my knowledge) and I think it is strange that it hasn't. Gather information quests should be a staple. Something fun to do in town. and your individual characters each get a chance to shine. Also, failing to get information won't be tragic, so you can have failures (for once) without needing the player to retry. Makes the game world more flowing and I think would encourage players to play without save scumming. (as it wouldn't even come to mind)

What? Yes it does. The rest of your party waits a bit as the rogue does his thing. "But that is boooring" you might say? Your face is boring. If you want to go from point a to point b without any enemies knowing, you can only take your stealthy characters. So basically you'd be forced to fight every encounter you want to avoid, unless all your characters have high stealth.

I very much would like my rogue class to be familiar to me: sneaking and stealth, many skills, and sneak attacks.