Small suggestions. Easily implemented ideas, quickfire thoughts.

[Lephys]

No worries. . It's still something I have no problem discussing. I just didn't know if I was having a blond moment or not.

[Cluas]

Very glad about all the things, Obsidian will NOT include...: A giant quest arrow. Voice overs, conversation animations and all that...

 

I know it's not gonna happen, but I want a toolset to make my own campaigns... I will really miss it 

[teknoman2]

i was thinking a bit about metagaming. i think it would be a good practice  in the design to make some things metaproof.

let's say the first time you played the game you came accross a puzzle or riddle. to solve it you had to go to a certain person and pay him to learn about an item that was needed, then obtain the item and take it back. next time you would already know that this item is for this puzzle, so you could skip the "pay the informer" part. by saying making the quest metaproof, i mean the item should be unobdainable if you have not spoken to the informer. the meta knowledge would allow you to get to him and to the item without wasting time searching, but it would not allow you to skip a step of the process

the example may not be the best, but i think it gives an idea of what i mean. of course in this game is a bit late to implement stuff like this, but it's something to consider for later

[Naesh]

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

[GhoulishVisage]

Here's something I'd like to see: The ability to name savegames.
It should be a standard on all pc games, but I thought I'd just throw it out there.

[TheisEjsing]

I've just done a BG 2 play through and I noticed that even thou Minsc is bald his paper doll got beautiful yellow hair. Would be a nice small thing if paper dolls could be bald.

[Gromnir]

elf toggle. toggle activated replaces all game elves with chris avellone stick figures.

 

 

Gromnir would double his pledge if such were included.

 

HA! Good Fun!

[JFSOCC]

Programming

 

At this point, the project is completely feature locked. The programmers are fully focused on fixing the mountain of bugs that have built up over the course of the project. There are still some items that need to be finished (installers, for example), but the majority of the work will be put towards fixing and polishing existing systems. This is where the build (that may have been unstable throughout development) really starts to come together.

I guess its time to close the thread Edited June 13, 2014 by JFSOCC

[Silent Winter]

I guess its time to close the thread

 

Or rename it to "Small suggestions, easily implemented ideas, quickfire thoughts for the expansion/PoE2"

[Blarghagh]

 

Programming

 

At this point, the project is completely feature locked. The programmers are fully focused on fixing the mountain of bugs that have built up over the course of the project. There are still some items that need to be finished (installers, for example), but the majority of the work will be put towards fixing and polishing existing systems. This is where the build (that may have been unstable throughout development) really starts to come together.

I guess its time to close the thread

 

 

Are all suggestions, ideas and thoughts pointless now that the development cycle has been feature locked? It's not unheard of for developers to go back and change things if playtesting determines something doesn't play exactly right, or even after launch. If anything, this thread can still work for the beta and for ideas for the sequel or expansion, and I'm not convinced that ideas that can't be implemented right now are inherently pointless if they stand a chance to be helpful later. At the same time, many ideas posted in this thread were surface ideas, polish and graphical tweaks - not exactly full features, so feature lock doesn't really affect all of them. As such, this thread is currently remaining open.

[Naesh]

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.

[Gromnir]

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.

is funny that we can't tell if this is a joke or is serious.

 

HA! Good Fun!

[rjshae]

How about beverages or drugs that only intoxicate specific humanoid races? Like Feyskrae for elves or Jupins Malk for Aumaua. For all others it is either sickening, mildly unpleasant or harmless. These materials bring additional profit when sold in the corresponding communities.

[Blarghagh]

You mean catnip?

[Lephys]

Oooh! Oooh! On a similar note, race-specific status effects!

 

Like... if you go to a desert region, maybe your Aumaua gets quickly dehydrated. Purely for example... Or, some type of pollen, etc., that only affects Orlans.

[Tsuga C]

I'd like it if some of the dark areas in the game were actually dark enough (especially early in the game before players get their hands on permanent magical light sources) that maintaining some sort of spell (Light, Ultravision, etc.), torch, or lantern was mandatory. Too often in cRPGs the simple act of being able to see after sunset in a mature woodland or in some subterranean area far from the surface is the default setting. Ambient light where ambient light shouldn't exist is taken for granted, assumed by the players as a given. I wouldn't want to have all the darker areas pitch black, but enough of them should exist that operating with a light source in one hand and a weapon in the other is a regular occurrence for 2 or 3 of the party members so that the rest of the party can function without penalty.

Edited June 13, 2014 by Tsuga C

[Lephys]

^ Piggy-backing on that excellent suggestion, I think that extraordinary forms of vision (night vision, thermal vision, etc.) should function appropriately. I'm fine with the otherwise-hidden foe showing up no matter who you have selected, but people without the vision should definitely suffer a penalty to their attack and defense, since they're having to rely on verbal direction like "Look out, there!" to actually locate/be aware of the foes' locations.

 

Seems like in some games, low-light vision and the like are just free "You get to see everyone like normal now," even if only one person in your group has it.

[Naesh]

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.

[Lephys]

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.

Haha. I think Skyrim actually had a comical romance novel in it. It was pretty funny. SO over-the-top cheesy.

[rjshae]

It sounds like there may only be a limited number of skills in PoE, so I'd like to see some means of refining a character's skill set. One way to do this would be to provide a set of skill specializations that provide a minor bonus. Rather than spending talents on these, the game could allow one specialization for every X skill ranks, where X is something in the range of 3 to 6. Thus, a Locksmith specialization in Mechanics could provide a +1 bonus when using the Mechanics skill to lock or unlock a door. There could be Mechanics specializations for Locksmith, Contraptions, Arcane, and Traps, for example. Epic levels could allow grand master specializations with a +2 bonus.

 

To limit this somewhat, the specializations could be limited to preferred skills for each class. Or they could be controlled by means of rare lore books.

[Hiro Protagonist II]

I'd like it if some of the dark areas in the game were actually dark enough (especially early in the game before players get their hands on permanent magical light sources) that maintaining some sort of spell (Light, Ultravision, etc.), torch, or lantern was mandatory. Too often in cRPGs the simple act of being able to see after sunset in a mature woodland or in some subterranean area far from the surface is the default setting. Ambient light where ambient light shouldn't exist is taken for granted, assumed by the players as a given. I wouldn't want to have all the darker areas pitch black, but enough of them should exist that operating with a light source in one hand and a weapon in the other is a regular occurrence for 2 or 3 of the party members so that the rest of the party can function without penalty.

 

I'd like this too. I would've like to have Infravision mean something in the IE games. Like only be able to see so far ahead of you and then it becomes black.

[Lephys]

I still think it'd be really awesome if you actually had distance/cover affect the information your vision granted. Like, if you have infravision, maybe you can see "there's obviously something that generates body heat over there, and it's humanoid, and approximately X tall, and kinda shaped thusly, but I couldn't tell you exactly what it is without getting closer." etc.

 

If it was dark, and things were near the edge of your vision range, with regular vision, you could still see the enemies, and make out their general movement, etc., but they'd basically appear as general shadow-y shapes.

 

Obviously you could go really detailed with that, or just have 3 stages of vision instead of 2 (visibile vs. invisible), at the very least. Either way, the general idea seems like it'd make things interesting. You could use spyglasses or scout-type abilities (or animal companions/familiars) in-combat! 8D

[Naesh]

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

[Tuckey]

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

 

Maybe having contextual responses would randomise a comment somewhat. i.e. Vary a comment based on location and general reputation.

 

A party member may phrase things cautiously if you have an aggressive reputation as compared to a friendly reputation which might encourage overstepping of boundaries. The comment would also come out different if in a pub as compared to a wilderness area.

[rjshae]

I had a thought that semi-randomized companion attributes set at the beginning of the game would make them a little less predictable. For example, give them a set of minimal base stats then add in a fixed amount of additional points spread randomly amongst the attributes. Give them a pool of starting talents then randomly choose among them. Vary some of their starting equipment a little and change up some of their initial spells.

 

Setting these parameters at the start of the game would make it difficult to select for by restarting.