ncguthwulf

Oh, one thing that I hated in world design: incomprehensibly powerful npcs. I remember Ultima Online, my character got to the point where I could solo almost any monster in the game, even dragon types. But a guard could teleport to me and 1 shot me in town. That was a clear mechanic to enforce rules, but it made no sense. Please dont have idiotic power imbalances in power. Makes for a break in immersion.

To those that thing it is needless or needlessly complex: I am kind of tired of playing games that are simply stats competitions on a painted background. Trees, rocks, mud, sand, ice, water, at best are only obstacles my model has to go around instead of being interactive. I don't want it to be as in depth or critical as Xcom. Hard Cover in Xcom was a 40% penalty to attacker to hit chance. That is nuts. But in a rpg, class based system, some sort of modification to the combat from the environment would be cool. Higher ground for archers, using cover, fireballs into a group of enemies in scrub brush... awesome.

Alex has a good point. One might think that instead of trying to create simulation to focus on micro encounters that promote immersion. Kind of like the arrow in the knee fiasco. It was clever to have some dialogue built into your random encounters with otherwise worthless npcs. But when the 14th soldier tells you he was an adventurer until he took an arrow in the knee, it becomes a joke. The nice thing about a narrative game is that you can create areas that are not revisited (without another play through). Within these pocket encounters you can devote a bit of time to making the NPCs that are not critical to the story still have some minor speech or interaction.

Fighter -taunt -durable -pbaoe (point bank area of effect, aka whirlwind) -zone of control (somehow making it difficult for enemies to walk right past them and smack the mage) -debuff the enemy: disarm, stun, knockdown Rogue -stealth -flanking attacks (the idea of getting a bonus to hit someone that isn't attacking them) -debuff the enemy: bleed and weakness -traps and bombs -strong versus unarmoured opponents. (mages) -dual wield for increased melee damage Wizard -damage -ranged damage -area of effect damage - debuff the enemy: paralysis, snare, slow, blind, sleep, knockdown, penalty to hit -brittle Cleric -heal -durable -buff the party -reasonable melee damage -weak magical damage *** each of the classes should have 3 - 5 clickable abilities that require thought and tactics in addition to larger more limited abilities, like once per day stuff. wizards should have the most abilities but be the most brittle. fighters might have the fewest clickable abilities but they should have some so it becomes more than just attack enemy, watch as they deal and absorb damage.

I think the key thing to think about when talking about classes is the idea of creating an artificial need for teamwork. Classes unrealistically limit what a player can do. Have you ever wondered why your Dex 18 figher never learns to sneak without multiclassing? It should be a relatively easy thing to do. Yet, in the system of the game sneak is not made available to the fighter and as a result the fighter must rely on the rogue for scouting. The limit is artificial and valuable. A good way to think about it is chess pieces. The knight and the bishop and the rook are different classes with different abilities. When used together they create interesting strategies. The queen would be a "broken overpowered" class in this analogy. The pawns and king, "underpowered". Based on that premise, a well designed class system creates a set of archetypes that synergize well. That is to say that a party composed of a fighter, mage, rogue and cleric in a well designed class system is more fun to play because of how the strengths and weaknesses of the classes interplay with the challenges of the game.

Night fighting, I dont think it is worth arguing. I think delivering attacks at night is harder. Swamp stuff: Perhaps nothing stupid like being in a GIANT swamp map where the mechanical effect is that you spend 3 minutes travelling the map instead of 1.5. That is dumb. But having patches of the map have certain environmental factors might be nice. So on a map we could have some deep swampy areas and some level ground. Players that choose to scout the map with a stealth character might discover there are some outlaws that use predominantly melee weapons. That player may decide to set up on the opposite side of a deep swamp patch in order to get extra attacks on the melee types as they try to close. Fire: Give people the choice... rush through the fire and take damage but get close to your foe faster or go around. Buildings Collapse: Obviously not an instant kill. You might have a character with near supernatural stength wearing plate... a flimsy wooden ceiling falling on his head is going to suck but not kill him (represented by taking damage). But I would love to have a fight go down in an alley, see some scaffolding and time my fireball to cause the scaffolding to fall on the approaching enemy. Cover would be harder, but possible. I don't think it should be nearly as pivotal as in XCOM:EU. I am thinking more like creating zones. If your character is within X distance of a tree, perhaps a small bonus to AC vs ranged. The whole idea of the hit bonuses and AC style system is that the characters are actively attacking and defending in ways that are not explicitly a result of player input. So if I (in real time) see a bunch of archers and run my mage to a tree then it should be assumed the mage will duck behind the tree to avoid arrows.

Fighter is my favourite when it is done well. Give me powers to click on and have some strategy built into the game and I am sold. Make "tanking" a sometimes thing, but a thing. Make the fighter moderate dps and the other classes brittle but higher dps. Make the level race and class important, dont make the fighter the sum of her gear. I dont want to finish a quest, get a nice sword and suddenly be 30% better.

Do you guys want to have to think about things like: At night, your characters that don't have night vision suffer a -1 to hit, -2 for ranged. In swamps, everyone is moving at half rate. On ice, chance to fall if you move faster than half move. On sand, 25% move penalty, etc. Certain spells don't work indoors, others get bonuses in tight conditions. Fireballs light objects on fire, cause walls and stuff to collapse. Additionally, the area of affect of a fireball is altered by objects. The idea of taking cover has merit. Environmental hazards, bullrushing someone over the side of a cliff or into a big fire has an affect. Certain races and classes get bonuses or penalties based on night/day, nature/city/subterranean environs, vs certain monster types, maybe even during seasons. Cover, does hiding behind a rock give you bonus AC vs the crossbowman? Or does it make no difference where you archer is standing in relation to theirs? Range, short, medium and long range with associated bonuses and penalties. Because I know I do. I hate it when I am fighting on a map and I position my archer partially behind a tree and it makes no difference to the enemy archers chance to hit me. I hate it when I use a knock back effect and there is some invisible wall (the zone boundary) that prevents me from sending the enemy sailing off a bridge. I want to be able to have my warrior duck behind a wall, fireball the enemy force, then have him emerge and go back to melee. As opposed to merely having to worry about him being within or outside the static radius of the spell.

As long as the elf chicks are skinny with big boobs and wearing almost no clothing have angular faces and big ears and cat like eyes and my nerd gag reflex is going off like crazy. I think a lot of settings don't take the time to think about what a long lived race would actually be like. Imagine we had people walking around that were alive 300 years ago. It would change our understanding of history. Want to know what the wild west was like? Ask bob, he was only 120 or so around then. So either take into account the impact of a long lived race or make their lifespans moderate. I like my elves to be fae like. Part of the seelie and unseelie court. Light and dark. I like my elves to be very specifically mystical in one way... so if they are attuned to nature, then go all out. Make them blend with he trees, have nature magic, etc. I dont like my elves to be magic generalists. Example: Crappy Elf Design Long lived magic people. +1 dex +1 spell penetration Prof with bows and swords regardless of class Fun Elf Design Seelie Elf +1 dex during the day -1 con at night +1 to stealth in natural environments +1 to attack in natural environments -1 to attack in subterranean environments X, Y and Z nature spells cost less mana to cast Unseelie Elf +1 dex at night -1 con during the day +1 to stealth in subterranean environments +1 to attack in subterranean environments -1 to attack in natural environments X, Y and Z darkness spells cost less mana to cast

Classic example of poorly phrased questions. It should be: I want an anthropomorphic animal race option in my game: a) Strongly Agree b) Agree c) Neutral d) Disagree e) Strongly Disagree I should not be forced to play a human in a fantasy setting: a) Strongly Agree b) Agree c) Neutral d) Disagree e) Strongly Disagree

The main campaign should not have a timer. But individual components should. Example: I can take as much time as I want to find the door to the overrun dwarven ruin. But once I am there, the almost dead dwarf at the door tells me I have 24 hours before the whole place comes down because of some magical doohicky. Now the pressure is on and I have to in there and do whatever I need to do without unlimited rest and healing breaks. For side quests, I think time should modify some of them. I have a tough time believing that a kidnapped child is going to be just fine and dandy with the trolls while I tour the countryside for a month. It destroys immersion. But if I find a rumour about a once buried temple rising from the swamp, OK, I feel like I can go there tonight or in 3 weeks. Additionally, I think time as a restriction should be used within quests to make them more difficult. Lets imagine a pursuit type of scenario. You are chasing the villain across the countryside, hoping to catch them before they get to home base. If you choose to rest and heal up too often they will get too much of a lead. But if you forced march for 24 hours you get some sort of combat debuff because your guys are tired. In summary: ~ Allow exploration by dividing the main story into time sensitive chunks without the whole thing being time sensitive. ~ When the story demands it, build in a time limit and make it known in the quest log. ~ Don't over do it. Less than 25% of the game should be time trials. ~ Make time change stories, decided to attack the vampire stronghold at night, gonna be harder, decided to rest and heal up so your enemy is able to contact his allies, there will be more of them, decided to force march for 36 hours to get somewhere before the enemy, debuff for fatigue BUT you get to set up inside the castle and play defence instead of siege it.

Day/Night/Time mechanics. The first thing that comes to mind is "what value does this add to the gaming experience?" Are these complex travel and day/night systems annoying and detract from the game or do they make the story richer? Day vs Night If handled properly this could add depth to the game. At night your team's archer sucks unless he is a nocturnal type race (drow?). Certain villains might be more powerful (vampires). Travel Time Again, if handled properly this could add a real sense of urgency to the game. A merchant's son is kidnapped by outlaws led by a vampire. You can assault their base immediately, and at night, in the hopes of saving him before the vampire eats him. Or you can wait until daylight when the vampire is weaker but you risk losing the kid and only being able to bring retributive justice to the villains.

What is really funny about this is that it actually seriously affects the community. Go and look at the XCom forums. There is a massive amount of poison being flung between people who claim to have beaten "Impossible Ironman" with zero countries/soldiers lost. People are calling for videos, flaming each other and so on. All because there is a mode of the game that is harder and people want to brag about their achievement. How this game is designed should take the community in mind. If you foster a good community you will get support, modders, fanboys that travel the internetverse singing the praise of the game. Very valuable. If however, the game modes are poorly designed and poorly implemented people will react poorly. If the Xcom designers had known how serious people were going to take clearing Impossible Ironman they could have created a system to prevent save scumming and avoided a lot of anguish.

JFSOCC - I am not sure why you would do that when they have a non iron man mode? But even if there is some reason for the extra work, I don't want the game designers to waste time trying to counter that "cheat". Even if there is a achievement or other thing you get for beating it on Ironman. Then again, they could make it so the saved games go on a cloud and you can't manipulate them (as easily). But then in order to play ironman you would need to be online. I minor issue nowadays but an issue.

I think what is ridiculous is taking a pen and paper system and porting it over without examining the strengths and weaknesses of the medium. For pen and paper, you are right, memorization systems are great because it requires minor amounts of work for the people playing the game. What I am hoping for is that extra tactical layer. I want to make decisions outside of battle, based on intelligence, that affect the coming battle and be rewarded for good choices and punished for bad ones. Example (bear with me, I am playing a lot of xcom): Council missions have you squaring off against Thin Men. Thin Men spit poison. Titan Armour makes you immune to poison. In my council missions I put my psy-assault character in a suit of titan armour (vs psy-armour) because it is situationally appropriate. The reward being that I never get poison spammed by my foes and it is ok to kill a thin man in a tile directly next to my character (run and gun assault type). Take that example and translate it to a fantasy rpg and what are the decisions you MUST make before a fight and not during? Memorization is the obvious one. If your warrior has a flaming sword and a flaming club they can switch between them based on skeletons vs zombies (resistance to edge vs blunt) during the battle. But if you are going into a graveyard against the undead and you take all charming/fear based magic (classically weak vs the undead) you suffer. That doesnt mean, however, that the system has to be exactly like DnD. You could have a system where your character has a certain number of spell slots and a certain amount of mana. So of their 12 spells they can memorize only 6 and based on their mana pool they can cast those 6 X number of times. Then as you level up you can make meaningful choices like the ability to memorize another spell OR have more mana. Etc. But dont take away the tactical layer outside of combat that affects combat. It is one of the things that makes an RPG great. Especially if the story is designed in a way that players who take the time to talk to npcs, read the lore books, explore their environment gain intelligence on their foes and then make good decisions.