ideas, suggestions and getting us off the bench

[mrverbal]

So in the update you suggested you're keen to hear our ideas. Well...here we go!

 

But before I talk about races and classes, I think the key thing to do is get community involvement. Run some contests - say to design a portrait or 3. I'm sure some artisticly minded people would love to take part (and I could watch!) Obviously you want to avoid stepping on the toes of those who have ponied up to create NPCS and so on, but - I'm sure you could do something.

 

Also, perhaps you could - ala the Reaper kickstarter (which if you weren't following, go do some research - it should be your primary playbook!) - add some 'extra cash' goals. Maybe you could, I don't know, sell the tshirt to people on the $65 or less goal for 20 bucks or something.

 

But the primary thing is: Give us a chance to get involved! Have a few little stretch goals scattered to keep people excited and throwing money at the screen!

 

So on to the whole race/class thing: It's something of a dilemma.

 

Obviously, you don't want to just try and jam a copy of lord of the rings into your CD drive and call it a day. But, equally obviously, you don't want to hack off customers who really, really like playing dwarves and elves, or who expect the base classes to be fighter/rouge/wizard/cleric/somethingorother. (The lack of a standard obvious fifth class is, in my mind, a positive. Unless you intend to use bards. Frack bards.)

 

I'd suggest the solution is to have the 1.1 mil goal be the standard fair - made unique to your world, but, you know. There is a reason even more with the classes than the races that the standard 4 are pretty standard - it's that what else are you rationally going to do? Then you can have some paladin-ranger-monk-alternate spellcaster classes as we pop up tiers.

 

You have the same options on races, and I think it's more important to use the bonus races we generate for differentiating your world. Maybe you could have playable....I don't know. Werewolves, fae, lizard people, half-elemental types, tieflings, etc - the list is large and complex. (I personally favour tiefling types more than others of the 3.5e DnD half races, as demons seem the most likely to have spawn, but there you go).

 

Additional ideas for additional stretch goals, tiers or just features:

 

Strongholds:

 

One of my favorite things in BG2 is the strongholds - the quests to get them, and keep them were very flavourful and exciting. And rewarded multiple playthroughs!

 

Useful Cheevos:

 

If you're going to have achievements, lets make them not suck. Look at ME1; lots of little bonuses for this or subsequent playthroughs based on having done exciting things.

 

Religion:

 

I'm sort of assuming you're going to have it. My personal preference is for the sort of polytheistic religions you get in classic D&D. So if you're going to have them....perhaps you could let people buy naming rights. (With obviously some negotiation so we don't see the high and might church of Yo Momma). I'm sure Notch is a sensible name for some kind of god.

 

Just a few thoughts, anyway. I'm sure I'll be back.

[Volourn]

At 1.8mil (which looks to be easily reachable), they'd have 5 races and 7 classes to play with...

 

So: Dwarf, elf, human + 2 others to have 'fun' with and surprise us.

 

Classes can be warrior, rogue, spellcaster type (depending how clerical vs arcane magic works) + 4 others so again lots of room to fool around with cool uncommon classes yet still keep the basic fantasy stuff and there since their goal seems to be go back to the 'fantasy hey day' of the IE.

 

I'm worried about limited number of companions though. They'd have 8 at 2.2mil which seems like a reality low number. This also likely means it's gonna be party of 4 (which I doubt mind personally) but others might.

 

MUST HAVE DWARVES THOUGH WITHOUT QUESTION!!!

Edited September 16, 2012 by Volourn

[mrverbal]

8 does seem a tad low on the companions side; and I'd love to have a bigger than 4 person party. 4 person parties often lock you out of having the most interesting classes because you have certain minimum requirements, often.

[Gazoinks]

8 does seem a tad low on the companions side; and I'd love to have a bigger than 4 person party. 4 person parties often lock you out of having the most interesting classes because you have certain minimum requirements, often.

Yeah, with this style of gameplay, a 4 person party seems pretty limiting since you won't be able to really stray from the Fighter/Rogue/Mage/Cleric layout without poking a hole in the effectiveness of your party. On the bright side though, a small amount of companions means they'll be able to be much deeper.

[fkldnhlsdngsfnhlsndlg]

Frankly, I would much rather have extensive races and sub-races like D&D, if only for the sake of gameplay. This is a party-based game after all, I'd really like the potential for replayability beyond a few basic combinations... not to mention the potential for modders to include full party creation if the gameplay supports it in any reasonable way. While the number of classes, races etc. does not define a system, it'd be nice to have some assurance that the character system will be extensive and interesting.

[HangedMan]

My own thoughts on the matter...

 

As far as races go, I think more options would be awesome. Even just throwing in the half-human-half-something-else things. But especially, I would like to see odd races like Tieflings. Maybe they could be hard mode, because most people would have a serious bias against anyone bearing any obviously infernal traits (or maybe they'd be honored by some folk).

 

And as for party size... why not make it so that we can use every single character we have at any given time? Of course, then it becomes a matter of leaving encounter balance up to the players. It wouldn't be fair to make all the end game stuff require you to have all the companions, because what if you missed two along the way? You'd be screwed.

Edited September 16, 2012 by HangedMan

[The Sharmat]

Eight actually seems like a pretty good number of companions to me by modern standards. Especially if they're going to be deeply fleshed out. Mass Effect 2 had a ton of cool characters, but for the most part they just amounted to...well, a cool character concept. They didn't really get to explore any of them that much. I'd rather have eight high quality party members than twelve cool concepts.

[Pop]

I'm worried about limited number of companions though. They'd have 8 at 2.2mil which seems like a reality low number. This also likely means it's gonna be party of 4 (which I doubt mind personally) but others might.

It's a low number if you're using the BG games as a benchmark, but the BG1 companions didn't require a whole lot of capital investment and the BG2 companions were made with a pretty considerable budget.

 

Mask of the Betrayer had significantly fleshed out companions and they totaled 5 in number, though in reality you only had a choice of 4. Given the amount of NPC-specific content and the like that will probably be included, the minimum of 5 could turn out to be a perfectly sufficient number of potential companions for a full game. And depending on how the class system works, we might not even get "must-have" CNPCs who we wouldn't otherwise take with us. I wouldn't worry too much.

[Moonlight Butterfly]

I would like Fairies, Lizard Men, Humans, Little tribblish cat type people (cos we all need some cute), and something big like a minotaur or centaur. (Centaur would be astounding.) and dwarves becuase I haven't played a well done dwarf for while. Not nessercarily all these things but some variation on elf dwarf human would be nice.

 

I would really like new game + because that's usually the only way I can bring myself to play through a game again sometimes. :<

 

An open world similar to Fallout might be nice rather than something like Icewind Dale which felt a bit restricted.

 

8 Companions is fine by me as they will be more likely to be well done.

Edited September 16, 2012 by Moonlight Butterfly

[Gorth]

At the risk of sounding like a false dichotomy, isn't the number of companions a choice between quantity and quality, especially on a tight budget? PS:T had 7 companions of which you could have 5 in your party. I sure enjoyed their company a lot more than the 16 or so I had to chose from in BG1 (which I considered expendable because they were relatively "shallow").

 

As for races, I don't mind if something like Dwarves exists (not just to escape Volourns wrath), as long as elves are truly extinct and relegated to myth and pictures in lore books. Of course, they could chose to make dwarves short, burly, yet effeminate (think 16th centuries noblemen with lace and everything) magic users. Now that would upset a few.