Naesh

I think it's a great idea to vary classes too, on hardcore difficulty. Basically, it disables calculated powerplay. You won't know what type of party you could put together until you have met all the companion characters.

Crawling Terror -------------------- The crawling terror comes at night. It is unknown exactly what kind of creature this is. We know only, that it is some form of predatory life, that instinctively tries to stay out of the light. It poses a danger to adventurers, as it targets campfires. When everyone is asleep, except the one person on guard, the crawling terror tries to lure him / her away from the others. It makes crackling noises in the nearby woods, imitates the moving of leaves in the bushes. When all else fails, the crawling terror tries to lure the person who is awake away from the campfire in a clearly imitated, childlike voice. At times it can be really persistent, repeating lines like "Come see me! I'm here behind the bushes!" and "I am alone here, in the dark!" even until dawn. Nobody has seen it, but we know that only the bloody, ragged clothes of those remain, who give in and step away from the light of the fire, into the dark.

Randomize party members responses to some extent. This would make them feel more alive. And this would increase replayability.

One thing i have concluded from reading this thread is that randomizing the npc responses to some extent would make them feel more alive.

Did i win?

Okay then, it's my turn at the pros and the cons. Pros: best fps mmorpg ever; a game mechanics guaranteed to maximize the funsies; big ass swords; will have trolls in it; can play it while sitting on the toilet; very big (and sharp!) swords. Cons: not long enough; not enough swords; lack of big swords; too short; every game character has perfect dental health... which is not really a con, but kind of odd, if you think about it.

>By finding obscure references to them in lore and then deducing their location. This. Plus, i really would like this 'deducing from references' part to have at least a small amount of *replay value*. It certainly seems possible to make a riddle of some sort, that really requires nearly all parts of these references to be gathered. The treasure could be randomized, the riddle could be randomized (to some extent) in a way that without getting (more or less) each part of it, there are just too many possible locations to grind through / check. As a bonus idea i think the best *randomized* way getting epic loot would be.... something that's influenced by the hero quests of King of Dragon Pass. (check it out)

I have found a quick way to include mature romance in the game. There could be some ingame books containing texts from those... uh, women novels.

Good. Then as a surface idea, i want to have huge, badass swords and scythes. Plus i want to be able to dress my pc up as the grim reaper.

I have a possibly cool idea. Remember the character generation phase of jagged alliance 2? You could take an optional quiz with some rather hilarious questions and possible answers, to get a suggestion of what type of character should you play. That was fun. http://wwwx.cs.unc.edu/~chrisv/node/8 Pillars could have an optional something like this. Plus, an ingame name converter / generator. Similar to these toys: http://rumandmonkey.com/widgets/toys/namegen/7749/ http://gorm.com/name/ http://thequarter.org/Media/VikingName.php The character creation phase could incorporate the name converter. There is a very good way to use this: ingame there could be a temple or some kind of big ruin, with some sort of fresco picturing a genealogy tree or an old and dusty book containing one. Something along the lines of 'the annals of great heroes / evildoers of old times' or something like that. Surely, this fresco / book must contain lots of names in it. And perhaps funny little stories about how this fellow was a prince but a wild boar killed him and other gems of lore. And here comes the most fun part : the names of these fellows could be the *converted* names of the backers. Say, i'm a backer and i'm called James Sunderland. During the character generation phase i enter my name into the converter, just out of curiosity, and it pops out 'Jarlebanke Sunda'. And because i'm not going to play a self-insert and this name sounds rather stupid, i am going to choose another name instead. But the name that the generator popped out sticks with me for some reason. Then during playthrough my character finds this book or fresco on a wall, containing lots of small stories, you know, lore and stuff. Among them there is a heartwarming story about how Jarlebanke Sunda the great, was supposed to be a prodigal sorcerer and such, who always wore pajamas. Until one day he entered a magic duel while hiccupping and accidentally summoned a very large mallet over his head. How about that? :-D

The green-robed tutorial characters of bg. Anything tutorial in nature. I would like to be able to turn off certain soundtracks, npc voices. Possibly customise soundtracks. I would like to be able to see die rolls and such. But for a complete beginner to crpgs it could get very annoying. Oh, and yes, and i would like to be able to toggle some kind of 'super fast start' mode, where i don't have to sit through the whole introductory sequence of the game. Candlekeep. I would like to be able to set the difficulty only at the beginning of the game. I am willing to see a compromise on this, but then the player should only be able to lower the difficulty mid-game. Being able to play through the entirety of the game on 'super easy' then turning the difficulty up for the last fight seems.... cheaty. And cheating takes away from the challenge the bad way, it kills all the fun. Oh, i just had a bright idea. Let's encrypt the saves. No save-game editor. Ever. Guhoh-guhoh! ....okay, maybe not. Not being able to debug ingame kills way more fun. Aaaand.... i thing it would be fun to see an animated lizard-type creature crawling on the interface from the edge of the screen, occasionally. But i want to be able to turn it off.

The random rolls at character creation could be handled differently than in bg. On 'easy' / 'normal' difficulties you can reroll arbitrarily many times. On 'hardcore' difficulty setting you can reroll at most X times. Plus, it would be nice to actually see the dices rolling on the screen. And the color / transparency of the dices could be randomized. Or not. I don't know yet. There is also the idea of throwing dices with the cursor, but i'm not sure about that. It's pretty annoying. And i don't want a detailed, immersive 3d like world map. I would rather have in-game made maps, that can be purchased from vendors / etc. (or tattooed on someones back) If you want to go somewhere, you can start by going from one end of the screen to the other, or, just obtain a map and select where you want to go. A precise, correct map. Not a fake one. Heh-heh.

I think it would be fun if the tone of narration changed depending on some variables. For example what sort of npc's are in the party overall, average use of magic / brains / brawl, things like that. Plus, it would be fun if the narrator was heavily biased against the heroes, portraying them as the evil antagonists of the story. "Thus, the heroes defeated the mighty warlord and tyrant, Tazok, ruler of the seven kingdoms. After helping themselves to the many trinkets the taxpayers have paid for, the heroes boldly ventured forward to the lands of Kuldahar, seeking new adventures without giving a single tought about the many years of unstability and civil war they have caused by removing the strong militaristic leader these lands covet so much. Indeed, they were too dumb and too self-absorved in the petty trinkets they have gained by looting the corpse of Tazok, mighty champion and hero, to even try to think about the logical consequences of their actions - the starvation and suffering of the innocent folk, for many years to come. " Imagine this text read by the narrator of Dungeon Keeper: But maybe doing something like this would be too hilarious for a game with a mature tone.

Yeah, you are right on that. Hmmm. The time-warp spell should work / be castable only if a given time has passed after the last time-warp spell was cast in the vicinity of the area. Years / hours .... this depends on the particular area. Aaand.... let's put a code into the AI script that limits the use of this type of spell depending on the real-life hours since the last time-warp spell was cast. So, the player encounters this type of spell at most once in every X real-life hours. How does that sound? Still too annoying? Hmmm.......

The name of the party could be named after the leader, by default. For example, "Tazok's group" or "Tazok's party". And you could have the option to rename yours, if you want. But i have a new suggestion: make the game with solo players in mind. So, if you decide to go solo, there should be no reference to a party or to multiple people in the conversations. (if you solo icewind dale you will notice that in the conversations everybody is talking in plural) Some other ideas: enchanted tattoos, poisoned tattoos, cursed tattoos. Tattoos that glow in the dark, but are invisible in the day. In an other thread i have already mentioned an ironman mode, where the save / load feature is disabled and there are time-travel spells instead. These spells actually load up an autosave (after playing a nice looking casting animation). The casting character might retain his/her experience and maybe other things. There could be bookmark spells as well, that work just like the usual save / load feature. There could be an upper limit on the number of uses of these type of spells. This limit could be achieved by making the casting dependant on some (very rare and expensive) consumables. If you play on ironman mode, then there could be, say, only seven of these in the world. So you can save / load your game at most seven times. When the party gets wiped out, the spell (provided that it is still in effect) loads up the latest save and consumes it. And of course, on very rare occassions enemy mages could also know of these spells. Imagine that you have almost won a fight, but then the enemy mage casts something (that takes unusually long) and boom, you are back at the last autosave. But this time the same mage will be more prepared, stronger and perhaps some traps and other enemies will be waiting for you as well. Backpacks, bandoliers of different size. Magically enhanced backpacks. Cursed backpacks, that make items disappear or change them into useless crap. Just like diseases can (and should) be identified by doctors only, these curses could be identified by specific npc's only. I wonder what's going to happen, if the npc you turn to mistreats the curse / mushroom-poisoning, due to lack of competence or something else. "Oh wait! It's not that potion, it's this one, don't drink it!" :D And what about the priest, who tried to cure sickness by mixing some healing herbs into a turn-to-stone potion? :D And how about long lasting spells or curses that mess with the automap? You don't even know when your map started to behave strangely, or when the items started to disappear from your backpack. "Hey, where is my +2 dagger? And what is this smelly dead fish doing in my backpack?" :D How about a cursed backpack, with a periodically opening portal in it? Wonder where your items went? Perhaps that goblin shopkeeper stole it from you, who sold you this backpack? So that's why it was so cheap! Of course the same goes for gem bags / other container items. An additional bonus feature would be if we could tint / paint the armors / shields / swords somehow. Mmm. I would tint everything black. In bg the color of each avatar was customizable, if i remember correctly. It's a nice alternative to have. And i want a sidequest, where someone from the party accidentally breaks a (fake?) item from a shop and we end up having to pay for it / go for a fetch quest / use magic / silence the shopkeeper. How about forged money by the way? Or thieves disguised as city guards, who claim that some of our money is forgery, therefore they have to take it? Imagine that the party enters a city for the first time, then a couple of (fake? corrupt?) guards claim that we are in breach of custom / law, therefore we have to pay a fine. Imagine the reactions of the party members, when they find out that there is no such custom / law!