Suggestions for project Deleware

[birdiedude]

Improvements over KotOR, among other PC RPG

[mkreku]

I also want my actions to affect the outcome of the game world, but I am not so sure that chapters is the right way to go. Gothic used this system, and everytime I ended up in a new chapter I was reminded that it was only a game I was playing. Maybe if the chapters were invisible for the player it would work, but since the general public demands clarity and simplicity (it seems), they wouldn't have a clue as to what just happened unless you got a big sign in the middle of the game saying "Chapter 2", followed by fanfares and orchestral music.

[roshan]

i would like to be able to control owns, allocate its resources, decide taxes, open trade routes, build structures etc.

[Sereyna]

I agree with you on all of those except # 1 and 2. I would hate nothing worse than going to some town and having to talk with every last citizen there to find out what my next quest is going to be. I agree, the generic no-personality people that you have wandering the town for no other reason than to make it look like something besides a ghost town aren't the best, but I can hardly see a viable alternative.

As for #2, I somewhat agree with you. In KOTOR the dark side options were pretty laughable, and I really dont think an evil person would take a lot of those options. Some people are BAD, but that doesn't mean they walk around extorting and robbing every person that they come across. But, I DO like options and the availability of options frequently-- it makes my gaming experience seem more complete.

 

But hey, thats jsut me

[Tigranes]

Nice points, but I will agree with Sereyna in one point; the reason that there are always shining beacons over Quest Characters is so you don't have to talk to every last Joe Baker. Let's see... a great example is the Mortuary of Planescape: Torment. If you talk to Zombie #42, after awaking a memory of placing something in that zombie's heart, you can access the plane and retrieve some of your valuables. The catch is, the floating name always says Zombie Worker. So you end up talking to the +30 zombies in the place, each time skimming thorugh the Torment's classic long description to find the zombie number. You do not want to do this the entire game. This is one of gameplay > realism things; if a baker gives me a quest i want this baker to be Malcolm the Baker, not Baker. There may be occasional average Joe that gives useful information, but mostly, the current method is best.

[chaosprism]

Avoid gratuitous "looting" in the form of rewarding people for taking stuff from chests right in front of their owners.

 

Only if you had amazing skills in silent theft and misdirection would you even be able to achieve that..

 

worse yet some games allow people to pick a lock on a chest right in front of its owner or police type character.

 

And I'd like more stuff in the world to interact with .. I dont like the feeling i'm walking around a carboard cuttout world, even if its visually appealing. I know detail isnt easy to spend time on but you almost need a special visual artist to do just that job. Someone to overview maps and areas and add detail to make the areas more immersive.

[Diogo Ribeiro]

I agree with you on all of those except # 1 and 2. I would hate nothing worse than going to some town and having to talk with every last citizen there to find out what my next quest is going to be. I agree, the generic no-personality people that you have wandering the town for no other reason than to make it look like something besides a ghost town aren't the best, but I can hardly see a viable alternative.

Well for one you could be told to look for someone with a given name, but could have the opportunity of asking locals of where the person is. Second, a sort of pop-up system like the one in Morrowind could work, with an indicator of the person's name as you got closer to the the person. One other system that could work was Fallout's examining option, that would usually display the properties of the selected object/NPC.

[birdiedude]

My point with #1 isn't that you should be forced to talk to each and every person, but that you have the option to do so. Games like the Final Fantasies are set up in an entirely different manner to say Fallout in that you don't really have to focus on specific quest giving characters. Basically they take the time and effort to develop each and every character in the world to some degree. It could just be some guy saying "I have to do my laundry" but the overall effect is that it is a more immersive and developed world (IMO) than most PC RPG's in which you automatically know who to talk to and who can be avoided. Basically there reaches a point when you want to talk to everyone because you know they'll have something interesting to say, and possibly uncover a fact about the world you didn't know before.

 

For example in FFX, early on in the game you are told to follow someone to a nearby village, if you simply do that you miss out talking to a couple blitzball players who explain the game to you. Not the mechanics, but interesting facts such as the people of this world can learn to hold their breaths for longer than ten minutes, something that otherwise would have seemed strange when it seemed everyone could breath underwater later in the game.

 

I never got this impression from KotOR or Fallout. You'd have the talking heads, the quest people, and the random farmers/drug addicts/whatever. Sure they added to the world but in a "hey these guys have a drug problem" kind of way that didn't immerse me.

 

Finally on this point Morrowind managed to name just about everyone. Sure the dialogue system could have used some work, but it did make some attempt. Actually Morrowind was pretty nice in developing the world through dialogue, if you bothered to read through it all what people had to say was interesting . . . until the twentieth time you see the exact same thing from a generic peasant, anyway.

 

The chapter system was just an example of how FFX-2 managed to get you to return to other places, if another system can be done better then they should go for it. I

[Darque]

On 1) I half agree, I don't think we should "have" to talk to everyone... unless all the important people stand still. If even one of them walks you may "never" find them.

 

On 2) I mostly agree, the light/dark thing should have been more vague and not always so cut and dried.

 

On 3) to a small extent it did, since some NPCs wandered from planet to planet and knew you, and some things did carry over. But not enough by a long shot.

 

Given that each "area" is a different planet, I find that this is more forgivable since it's not likely that a lot of change would occur given the distances involved.

 

On 4) Again, given that this takes place on multiple planets across a galaxy.... it makes more sense for things to be "completed" than if all the action occured on a single world.

 

On 5) agree wholeheartedly.

 

On 6) Haven't beaten it yet, but i agree with the context

 

On 7) didn't read it in case of spoilers

 

On Disagree, I see this as one of KoTOR's strengths and it greatly added to the immersion.

[Chris Avellone]

Improvements over KotOR, among other PC RPG

[Sereyna]

^^^ The Master speaks.

 

What he said

[Retch]

Avoid gratuitous "looting" in the form of rewarding people for taking stuff from chests right in front of their owners.

Also, it would be good to have some recognition of crimes such as theft having been noticed. For example, in Geneforge 2 I found a smith who offered to buy iron bars from me. I promptly broke into the town's supplies, stole all their iron bars, and sold them to the smith. Fair enough that he wasn't suspicious at that point, but it seems strange that even weeks later (in game time) no-one has noticed either that the iron bars are missing, or connected this fact to the stranger who sold them exactly the same number at around the same time...

[Darque]

In Arcanum it was just as bad.

 

If you could open a merchants bedroom door and then their chest... you could steal from them.. then sell it back... then steal it again

 

At least KoTOR did it partially right.

 

While you could loot "almost" anyone... the fact it REALLY pissed off the sandpeople shows they at least thought of the idea I guess most people aren't going to say no when you're packing a lightsabre :D