Advancing the game/Progression~ Far-fetched Ideas

[Osvir]

This is all fictive ideas.

 

* Character Creation

 

 

You start out without any class but you get to put out stat points and get to choose some basic gear. Statistics effects Dialogue, Physique, Intelligence and so on and so forth.

 

 

* Classes/Advancing

 

 

A Class is something you find in the game, through a Trainer or through Learning by a book. You are the naked Adventurer without much skill and have to learn everything from scratch. Saga Frontierhas this random effect where there is a chance you might learn a technique in battle. Companions would/could teach you, and help you progress. In another thread we slightly discussed Breathe of Fire III and the protagonists development throughout the game:

 

1- Starts out like a fart (not really but I don't want to spoil) and he wails his sword closing his eyes in battle. He has no skill and is somewhat of a coward

2- Is more confident after a series of events and begins to learn how to handle the sword and look at his enemy when he attacks them. He has now started to learn how to protect someone else and is very confident. The game presents the Player with a purpose.

3- Time passes, our hero is older, is now a confident Master Swordsman.

 

 

* Enemies

 

Defines your Weapon Level, in a sense. Basically, the more you take out of one Monster or enemy, the easier they become to take down. When you reach a certain amount (let's say you killed 50 Gibberlings) you won't be stronger against them anymore because you can pretty much glare them to death at this point. Enemies that you have slaughtered a lot could even flee at the sight of you because you've traumatized their Race and you are now an Apex Predator in their eyes. This will also let the Player get to play the game through the real challenges.

 

Bosses would always be unique and thus always difficult, or if you have taken down 100 Humanoid Bandits you might get a petty little +1 Bonus to Damage/Attack/Hit when facing the Bandit Lord (which is rather insignificant on anything but Hardcore-Expert-Deluxe).

 

Fighting enemies would unlock techniques after a while, that works on anyone. Take the Fighter for instance, he might learn a Magic Cleave Attack that sends energy out in a wide arc when you've defeated 34 Gibberlings, which you can use on Tasloi's.

 

 

* Armor/Advancement

 

The gear you start with is your "core" gear, throughout the game you find upgrades. A leather strap to put over the torso, perhaps an enchantment which makes your skin tougher (if you go the Barbarian route). Shin guards that you can repair and upgrade with new features and new plating and so on and so forth. A more of a Terraria/Minecraft approach (Except without looting and having 10000 components in your backpack). You advance on the fly, you defeat the Bandit then you use his gear instantly to boost your equipment, then moving on (Interactive Experience Points ftw).

 

For Bosses you could get specific loot, Legendary Weapons and such. Armor/Defensive would be it's own "Character" within your "Character". Something that Levels up on its own kind of, or like a "Pet" that you control. I don't know how to explain it but I think you might get what I'm going for.

 

Piece-meal armor that progressively upgrades as you play the game.

 

* Magic/The Grimoire

 

As your "Naked" Adventurer (Much like Planescape: Torment) you find the tools to craft your own Grimoire and go the route of a more Magical character. Using spells makes them better, but you have to use them a lot. A Magic Missile used 10 times might get you the 2 Magic Missile content. Using that 20 times gets you to 3 Magic Missiles etc. etc. If Enemies are fixed (Like in Baldur's Gate, little respawn except during Fast Travel) Grinding spells is going to be like Rest Spamming but worse and totally not worth it for the average/casual player.

 

You would have to dedicate a lot of energy and time just to abuse this (if P:E will be anything like Baldur's Gate).

 

* Dedication and issues

 

I think a system like this would put you on your toes a little bit, it could cause problems if too complex and requires lots of dedication. If I get the Grimoire, if I want to be any good with Magic it would require me to use Spells a lot but I'd be missing out on the Weapon skills or the defensive skills. There are no "Levels", but fixed enemies of fixed strength.

 

* Because I like Trees

 

Having 3 Combat Skill Trees that can be upgraded on to of all of the above: Defensive/Armor, Offensive/Weapon and Magical/Grimoire.

 

* Not addressing any "out of combat" thoughts.

Edited November 11, 2012 by Osvir

[rjshae]

The gear you start with is your "core" gear, throughout the game you find upgrades. A leather strap to put over the torso, perhaps an enchantment which makes your skin tougher (if you go the Barbarian route). Shin guards that you can repair and upgrade with new features and new plating and so on and so forth. A more of a Terraria/Minecraft approach (Except without looting and having 10000 components in your backpack). You advance on the fly, you defeat the Bandit then you use his gear instantly to boost your equipment, then moving on (Interactive Experience Points ftw).

 

Piece-meal armor that progressively upgrades as you play the game.

Ah, no. This one is just too restrictive. I'm okay with the idea of your character becoming increasingly familiar with a piece of equipment and thereby gaining some benefits as the game progresses. But the idea that the PoS armor you acquired at the start can't be replaced with a new suit made by a master craftsman is completely unrealistic.

[Osvir]

The gear you start with is your "core" gear, throughout the game you find upgrades. A leather strap to put over the torso, perhaps an enchantment which makes your skin tougher (if you go the Barbarian route). Shin guards that you can repair and upgrade with new features and new plating and so on and so forth. A more of a Terraria/Minecraft approach (Except without looting and having 10000 components in your backpack). You advance on the fly, you defeat the Bandit then you use his gear instantly to boost your equipment, then moving on (Interactive Experience Points ftw).

 

Piece-meal armor that progressively upgrades as you play the game.

Ah, no. This one is just too restrictive. I'm okay with the idea of your character becoming increasingly familiar with a piece of equipment and thereby gaining some benefits as the game progresses. But the idea that the PoS armor you acquired at the start can't be replaced with a new suit made by a master craftsman is completely unrealistic.

 

Misunderstandings. I'm playing with the idea that I could get the new master crafted suit added to my current suit (on top of it, like an advancement/upgrade, which, of course would be different depending on how I choose to upgrade it). I'm talking about a piecemeal armor that you can build in different ways:

 

Torso:

- More Plating (Paladin~)

or

- Tougher Skin (Barbarian~) or even More Plating as a Barbarian which make you into a different type of Barbarian

Edited November 11, 2012 by Osvir

[gglorious]

Right, I'd also have to admit that I don't think this is the best direction.

 

So, in order to have a prayer's chance at living through combat, your character would have to have some form of weapon skill in advance simply because ALL enemies are going to have some minor degree of training. An enemy combatant is one because they have some expectation of winning and surviving, so they have to have some degree of talent, enough to reliably defeat anyone without training. So, to start off at the very bottom doesn't strike me as plausible.

 

Also, I enjoy the mechanic of replacing armor, rather than just improving it. I like finding the legendary platemail and replacing what I have and then selling my earlier armor.

 

I also don't like your feat system. It.... encourages grinding way way way too much. If I have to think "Oh, I need to kill 7 more gibberlings to get holy strike", then I'm going to spend a lot of my time killing gibberlings, and not just playing the game. It's fine to have some abilities that come out through practice, but I shouldn't have to grind and I don't want to grind.

[Ieo]

I'm not sure exactly what you're proposing; there's no abstract or IMRAD format. Are you suggesting advancement without explicit character level? Hmmm.

 

I'll be honest--I do not like binding "advancement" to gear. In every single game I've played that has done this, questing inevitably becomes entrenched in that mindset, and the narrative becomes second-place (some people would play that way anyway, but I mean there's no need to design the game to favor that). In a faction-based political game world, then there's the added issue of balance--if you want the most awesome full plate set, you must become ultra-friendly with faction A. Or the designers can make awesome side-grade full plate sets for all factions, and then players will be tempted to metagame to that extent, or maybe that wouldn't even make sense for some factions. I suppose ways around this would be to make random drops or general cave-kill-loot areas or just put stuff into shops... but let's face it, getting great stuff out of questing tends to feel better than shopping or random drops. I really did like BG1's gear spread because there was a narrow range of useful stuff and I didn't need to obsess about it. I play an MMO at the moment; gear is everything, and you must obsess to play effectively. As everyone should know, MMOs are generally dead last in narrative compared to SP CRPGs.

 

But don't forget crafting. That's a whole other variable the game needs to be balanced against. Since we know nothing about it, I don't feel the need to conjecture except that I expect Obsidian to actively consider game balance. The open question about gear is simply--what gear range will PE be balanced against.

 

I'm very dubious about your enemies/magic sections. Weapon advancement by grinding enemy numbers is a straightforward mechanic, but it lacks any finesse; while it's true that field experience is better to hone one's combat skills, substantial training with specific field point training can work (don't forget that PE will be designed to allow completion with dialogue as well, and I don't believe the desire to talk is necessarily mutually exclusive with the ability to fight). Your magic idea is already unbalanced against your "weapon advancement" idea in that mere skill use advancement is easier than kill advancement. Any system that promotes or even requires grinding is already broken, IMO. I would rather have skill advancement be tied to character level and player choice.

 

My view on advancement revolves mainly around game balance versus personalization, I suppose.

 

Character levels are much easier to conceptualize and balance ("seasons of experience") against enemy content as well, and Josh said somewhere that PE1 will be somewhere around level 12-13 in D&D terms.

 

* Character creation. Player picks the stats, basic class-based gear (or auto-grant is fine by me). This is easier to balance than learn-class-by-content because PE has a lot of classes and designing such content without hamfisting is too much--I'd rather all that work go into world content. Unless we're talking about in-game NPC trainers like Divinity 2 or something, but that game had three classes. PS:T also only had three classes, so you could get by training class content within game questing/NPC interaction.

 

* Health/Stamina by level+stats. Straightforward.

 

* Then the bulk of other character advancement should be based on discrete skills learned at new levels.

 

I'm not a fan of trees. Too railroady, lacks personal customization, over-simplifies thinking to developer-defined roles. But loose bushes--sure. I don't mind wizards and priests learning from randomly found scrolls and whatnot, but the balance problem there is that none of the combat classes can do this..... unless there are combat books teaching specific combat skills---but then there are so many classes in PE and we don't want their class skills to overlap much at all that I think the learn-skill-by-item thing is best thrown out completely. Learning special skills by quest, however, can be finessed so that a certain quest NPC could teach certain skills for a subset of classes. There are a number of ways to do all this, I guess.

Edited November 11, 2012 by Ieo

[Hellfell]

Armor advancement sounds like dragon age 2 companion armor system. I think it could be ok for NPC companions to have their unique armor so we could upgrade it, though I still prefer to have full control over my character equipment

[Osvir]

Right, I'd also have to admit that I don't think this is the best direction.

 

To be honest, I just scratched the surface and brainstormed my thought out without much thought to it.

 

Writing blind~

 

I more or less wanted a thread on "How does our character advance in the world/levels/class etc. etc?" and what people feel about it, how do you want your advancement to work? What would be the wildest way you can think of versus the most stable advancement?

 

Also, Ieo, great post, thoughts and ideas as usual.

[Osvir]

Armor advancement sounds like dragon age 2 companion armor system. I think it could be ok for NPC companions to have their unique armor so we could upgrade it, though I still prefer to have full control over my character equipment

 

It's because it somewhat is but people don't seem to understand that I'm talking about a customizable armor (just like in Baldur's Gate) but you progress it as you go along bit by bit. Piece by piece, and you also get to choose which direction you want to take. Fire protection? Ice protection? Choose one.

 

Protection from Psionics on your helmet? Might be a good idea, but you're going to loose out on all of those other bonuses that you could upgrade it towards.

 

In other words, Armor could be a Skill Tree and each "Piece" would have it's own path (I'm thinking of Starcraft 2: Wings of Liberty the research panel in a sense, just developed per piece; boots, torso, legs, gloves etc. etc.)

Edited November 11, 2012 by Osvir