Luke Barrett wrote...
hoorayforicecream wrote...
[snip]
Let's say, for arguments sake, that gameplay refers to anything that affects combat, directly (how you fight) or indirectly (armor strengths, weapon types, stat recalculation...etc). With that in mind I'll address the issues that fall under that category (and wasn't already addressed elsewhere)
1. Items that have interesting effects. Orsino's Staff of Violation that randomly casts Walking Bomb was pretty neat, but I didn't get the chance to use it. Items that aren't just stat sticks, but have interesting effects in combat.
Agreed, though Walking bomb was an odd choice as it's quite negative when you're not expecting it on Nightmare. I'd actually like to see some armor with reactive effects other than on hit stealth as well.
There's a lot of potential for these types of effects... when you're hit, stealth, enemy knockback, enemy takes fire damage, etc. I only used the walking bomb as an example, but knocking back an enemy that just hit you seems like a fine thing on a tank's armor, for example.
2. Summonable temporary allies. Perhaps some sort of consumable item that I can purchase to summon a golem to absorb hits and taunt enemies, or a spirit to heal my party.
Perhaps a summoner spec might better work for this? Otherwise we would need some sort of lore to explain why you can conjure things with a wand - it may be make people say 'why be a blood mage when you can just use an item to summon spirits?'
A summoner spec might be interesting as well, though it can get difficult because people would start asking "Why can't I control my summoned dude?" and similar problems. I would assume that you could "lore it" by making them sellable via circle mage stores... miniaturized enchantments, so to speak. Or they could be special quest items, like a golem control rod, or a healing spirit bound in a bottle. It has a cooldown and can be used to help in battle. Basically, expand on the dog companion on an as-needed basis. You could even make it an interesting quest reward where you choose one... do you want the healer in a bottle, or the tank? Or perhaps you want the onyx panther that shreds up the enemies, or something.
In any case, I'm not saying that I'm the lore mistress. I'm not; that's why you guys have the writers. I just think that having summonable temporary allies in combat would be fun and interesting, especially when shoring up holes in your group (due to KO or just party member choice).
7. Places I can go to keep fighting that isn't pre-scripted. E.g. a battlefield, where I can always fight bad guys, even if they don't necessarily provide any sort of meaningful loot. If I want to grind levels, test builds, try out new gear, I should have that option someplace in the game. A place with restockable enemies to practice on.
So basically some sort of randomly generated dungeon system? That's usually what's put in place to accomplish that goal.
Not necessarily even a randomly generated dungeon system, but like... here's an example. When I was in the Deep Roads in DAO (a place supposedly crawling with unending hordes of Darkspawn) it was pretty jarring when I had to backtrack to look for codex entries and stuff, and the whole place was just totally barren since I had killed everything already. If I could go to the Deep Roads just to kill darkspawn that spawn in various places each time I venture through them (you know, like the game tells me I should expect), I'd be a lot happier. I can get my kill on in the context of the game, without needing to procedurally generate anything.
1. Specializations integrated/unlocked via gameplay, rather than just having them all selectable from the appropriate level. It's especially jarring when something like Blood Magic is made a plot point, but no attention is drawn to it via gameplay.
I actually touched on this a few months ago. I think we addressed different story based ways to accomplish this goal. The counter-point, I believe, was that users didnt like having to find these during gameplay if they required blocking portions of the game off (such as Reaver in DAO) as well as some of them appeared far later in the game.
I can understand that. Maybe a more happy medium, where some of them are easier to obtain, and others are held back for story reasons. This would just require making them not mutually exclusive with content. Isabela's teaching of the Duelist spec in DAO was a great example of what I thought worked. The reaver/blood mage/etc. spec felt a little too exclusive though... for something as core to gameplay as specializations, it would make sense not to gate them in such a way. In the example of the Reavers, you could perhaps have a Reaver that had turned on them (felt that the dragon cult was wrong, killed his sister, betrayed them, something), and by defeating them and rescuing him, he teaches the Warden the specialization in thanks. You get the specialization either way, but you can still make a meaningful choice regarding the Urn of Sacred Ashes anyway.
2. More depth for Cross class combos. Instead of just bonus damage, other effects instead/in addition. Creating an obscuring cloud, setting all nearby enemies on fire, lowering the enemy's armor, etc.
3. Better differentiated enemies. I don't mind having the critters and normals being silly, but give more tactical and challenging fights by giving the Lieutenants and Bosses some actual tactics. When they show up, they should be sufficient to give pause and make the player have to think a little about strategy (esp. at higher difficulties), rather than just act like normals with higher HP. These should be legitimate tactics, like the ones the player can give to her companions. Make the 'boss' figures empower their cronies, and make use of the AI to provide more tactical combat.
Both of these simply require more depth to combat. We're looking at ways to improve enemy AI. As for the CCCs that's somewhat in the game already but in a very minor way. Perhaps we need certain skills to have this as their focal purpose instead of being somewhat of a secondary bonus.
Yes, I would agree there. The biggest issue is that the upgraded version of the skills tend to just do more damage when used in a CCC. Emphasizing the CCCs would definitely help a lot, and add more depth to the choice of character to bring with.
Edit: Someone else brought up a very good point - we don't have a really clear and easy way to set up CCCs. Only a handful of ways to apply brittle or disorient, usually with long cooldowns and only a single target. So what about some skills that start more like utility, then you upgrade them to be damaging too? First they apply the CC status, maybe do something else cool with upgrades (like fatiguing fog, but in reverse... start by applying the disorient, then upgrades make it also slow or root or damage, or whatever when upgraded). That way you have a couple of choices, damage-dealing abilities that get better when upgraded to work with CCCs, and CCC-setup abilities that get better when upgraded to do damage. Then at the base level, have abilities that take advantage of CCCs at baseline to help emphasize them. One of the things that bothered me about CCCs in general was that I didn't get to take advantage of them without substantial point investment (both to cause the status *and* to take advantage of it). It felt like I was being taxed at both ends when I should be encouraged to try them out.
4. More depth in Rivalry and Friendship. Perhaps instead of making it an on/off bonus, have a scaling amount... the more friendship/rivalry you have with a character, the larger the bonus gets (similar to inspire <stat> in DAO).
The problem I see with this is simply that it would require every single buff to be scalable (even though I think they are right now so it may be a non-issue if that trend continues)
This is why I brought it up. It's another design constraint for designing the perks, but even then, it doesn't necessarily have to be scaling. Like, for example, you can do this:
25% friendship: +5% attack speed
50% friendship: Gain access to ability X
75% friendship: +5% crit chance
100% friendship: Gain access to ability Y, or upgrade ability X or something
Modifié par hoorayforicecream, 11 juillet 2011 - 08:15 .
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