LordYabo
After seeing the trailer and watching your pitch I'm looking forward to the game. (I have cast a vote on the greenlight site).
Thank you! You rock!
But I have some questions:
These are really good questions, do you mind if I post them on the steam discussion so others can see the answers?
Will there be a lot of grind involved or will the game will relativly grind free?
You said you aim to make an anwikiable game, but I'm afriad that entails a shit load of random encounters to prolong the game and make it more unexpected.
Don't get me wrong I like blobbers and even some grind when the battle system is enjoyable, I'm just a little worried.
Great question. As a player, i feel your pain. I have 3 little kids under 4 and have little time to play, so that play time better be AWESOME, not rehash of the same ol same ol. I felt Pillars did a good job in this regard.
Early in dev I said "NO RANDOM ENCOUNTERS EVER". I've since had to qualify that a bit for situations like this:
The giant spiders have a nest at a specific location on the map. The player moves through that hex. Do they encounter spiders?
Well, a hex represents about 3x3 miles, so based on the population level of the lair there should be a significant chance of having to fight giant spiders just to get through. Is THAT a random encounter? I don't think so. But to a player it may look like one. But that encounter is actually a clue to the player that this is an area populated by giant spiders and may want to investigate it further. Lairs operate like monster generators sorta like guantlet. Kill the generator, stop the flow of monsters.
So what i meant by my initial statement of never having random encounters is this is not like final fantasy where every N steps causes a battle.
This is like D&D. You enter a dungeon populated by goblins, there are specific locations where you will encounter them and then never again. There may also be patrols as determined by the AI GM.
Let me clarify what I mean by "unwikiable":
A game where you can't go to the internet to get the answer of what to do or how to solve the problem.
Every world is randomly generated, so there is no way to know if this noble will betray you or not.
Every quest is randomly generated, so there is no way to see where to go to get the quest item.
Even the history of your world is randomly generated which affects some of the parameters of your game. For instance, the availability and power of spells are different from game to game. In your game world, a historical mage may have written a book with level 30 fireball in it, but not in my gameworld. So even here I've put work into making questions like "what's the best spell to use" irrelevant to ask. It also makes for different experiences on different play throughs as the overal strategy and combos change. (It's more involved than this, but this is a good summary)
Finally, and this may elate you, there is no experience points for combat. None. Nor loot. What you get for winning combat is to keep living and doing what you want.
Simply by removing the power gain reward from combat immediately takes combat from center stage (most games) and puts it back into concert with the other pieces so the game works more as an "ensemble piece".
In fact, deemphasizing combat begs the question: well what else will I do???? And the answer is EXACTLY! That's why Archmage has so much for you to do because there is so much more to being in a game world than just slaying stuff (as important as slaying stuff is).
How far/deep will the relations with people in the wolrd go. You said you are inspired by Pirates but while it was a great game the relation between you and your spouse were really limited. Will I be able to have a conversation with my wife, send her to do something, produce children, will the spouse give me gift when I return, or will I have to give her gifts to keep some relation bar high? Will she cook for me giving me some stat boosts I don't get eating/sleeping in a tavern ? (home sweet home modifier
). Will the family of my spouse try to take revenge on me if I treat her badly ? (selling her off).
How will having children work? Is there a passage of time ? Can I train up my kid to be a second Wizard and include him in my party?
Short answer is: Yes!
Clearly you "get" what this game is doing. These are some really good ideas and I've just brought them to the dev team to consider because I think you said it better than I did.
Also you said the game is inspired by Raistlin Majere, but can I play as something like Palin Majere, get my fingers broken by the villains and become a jaded and disilusioned grump of a wizard?
Yes, you can be as Palin or as Raistlin or as Fistandantilus as you want to be. In fact, some of the late game content is very Fistandantilus inspired.
