Preview Depth of Peril preview at RPG Watch

[Vault Dweller]

Tags: Depths of Peril

<a href=http://www.rpgwatch.com>RPG Watch</a> has posted a <a href=http://www.rpgwatch.com/show/article?articleid=52&ref=0&id=249>preview</a> of <a href=http://www.soldak.com/content/blogcategory/17/30/>Depth of Peril</a>, an action indie RPG with a strategy twist. The preview is good, but not nearly as good as the upcoming Codex preview, because Dhruin's character is a warrior lamely named Darian, while my character is a female rogue named Sexy. 'Nuff said.
<br>
<br>
<blockquote>Undertaking quests and adventuring is a major part of the gameplay and this aspect is essentially a standard hack’n’slash action/RPG. In some ways I was reminded of FATE – a starting town, a randomly generated world, random quests and robust hack’n’slash action – but then imagine a sort of multiplayer twist, where the point of adventuring is competing against others to build resources before taking them out.
<br>
<br>
This is the key innovation with Depths of Peril - the competition and interaction with the other covenants. Each of the NPC heroes from the other factions goes out and actively adventures in the gameworld to improve their position. You’ll come across them out in the field (especially in the beginning when everyone hits the starter areas around the same time), see them in town talking to the traders and be able to influence relationships with them by trading, paying or demanding tributes and creating alliances or declaring war. The world is also dynamic, with various events cropping up.</blockquote>Discuss.
<br>

 

[Severian Silk]

Hmmm. I'd rather see more traditional strategy game elements. eXplore, eXpand, eXploit, eXterminate, rOleplay

 

[Koby]

Hmmm. I'd rather see more traditional strategy game elements. eXplore, eXpand, eXploit, eXterminate, rOleplay

As long as we are on the topic of unrelated requests, I would like it to be a 4S RPG: Yesss, the 4 Sss of RPGsss: sservile, sssneak, sssteal and asssasssin.

 

[AnalogKid]

This game struck me as the most interesting of those included in the indie developer round-table discussion months ago, and I'm still hopeful that it'll be as cool as it is in my imagination. I really like the strategic layer on top of action-RPG lewt mongering, and I also dig the idea of other active agents in the game trying to do the same things as you (don't I remember an Oblivion promise about things like that once? HAHAHAHAHA). Anyway, in the spirit of discussion, I have some thoughts/concerns about Depths of Peril:

- "hectic, fast paced" competition with other factions scares me a little. I hope that there's a time-stop feature at certain points in the game, because I'm very anal about optimizing my character's skills, equipment, quests, etc. I can easily see a situation where a guy could kill 100 foozles and raise 3 levels in the time it takes me to talk to the shop keepers in the market and kit out my mercs. It would suck to be rushed to the point of wanting to read quest descriptions quickly because you're losing time. I think the competition pressure is very cool, I just hope it doesn't get out of hand.

- End game "victory conditions". How long does it take to win a game? A day? A week? A month? Can you keep playing after you rule Jorvik? Can you import characters and start with non-newbs? Of most concern, is it possible to play for a week and get in a dead-end situation relative to the other covenants so that the game is unwinnable because they'll all gang up on you? In most Diablo clones, if you're stuck you can just go grind and farm and eventually move on. It seems like this game might have a situation where you waste many hours of grinding only to be screwed. Granted, at least that's a consequence, but it would blow to have to play the first 20 hours of the game over and over again until you get lucky or get it right and can finally win.

- I wish the covenant houses were more impressive. It looks like 4 dudes hanging out in 1 room. I think it would be AWESOME if each covenant spawned a random dungeon/stronghold on a separate map with size proportional to covenant power, and you had to wade through hoards of foot soldiers (and more powerful hired mercs) to reach the lifestone, not just bonk billy and his 3 poker buddies before grabbing their bud light.

- I don't think I like the art too much. It's not the technical graphics, it's the candy-store shiny looking world. Maybe the screen grabs don't do it justice, but I would have like a darker, grittier vision for a game about cut-throat power struggles amognst barbarians fighting to the death. *shrug*

Anyway, I'd like to read more discussion about this game, and if I understood the news post right, I'm definitely looking forward to VD's preview. Maybe those who've played could speak up about some of my questions/concerns?

 

[speeler]

- "hectic, fast paced" competition with other factions scares me a little. I hope that there's a time-stop feature at certain points in the game, because I'm very anal about optimizing my character's skills, equipment, quests, etc. I can easily see a situation where a guy could kill 100 foozles and raise 3 levels in the time it takes me to talk to the shop keepers in the market and kit out my mercs. It would suck to be rushed to the point of wanting to read quest descriptions quickly because you're losing time. I think the competition pressure is very cool, I just hope it doesn't get out of hand.

Most of the UI screens that take time to read or to do something automatically pause the game for you for this reason. Even if they don't, you can pause the game whenever you want. So this shouldn't be an issue. I wouldn't suggest walking away from the game long with it unpaused though

- End game "victory conditions". How long does it take to win a game? A day? A week? A month? Can you keep playing after you rule Jorvik? Can you import characters and start with non-newbs? Of most concern, is it possible to play for a week and get in a dead-end situation relative to the other covenants so that the game is unwinnable because they'll all gang up on you? In most Diablo clones, if you're stuck you can just go grind and farm and eventually move on. It seems like this game might have a situation where you waste many hours of grinding only to be screwed. Granted, at least that's a consequence, but it would blow to have to play the first 20 hours of the game over and over again until you get lucky or get it right and can finally win.

The length of a game can vary a lot and depends on a lot of things like how many covenants are in the game, which covenants are in the game, your power compared to everyone else, and how aggressive everyone is being. I've had games that were less than an hour and some that took days. We are much more like a strategy game in this respect, since a game time can vary so much.

You can get yourself into an unwinnable situation but you can always start a new game with your character. Your character, all of your items, and your recruits will carry over into the new game, so you don't really lose that much. This basically answers you other question about importing characters. You can always start a new game with an old character.

And yes, you can continue a game that you have won, if you wish.

- I don't think I like the art too much. It's not the technical graphics, it's the candy-store shiny looking world. Maybe the screen grabs don't do it justice, but I would have like a darker, grittier vision for a game about cut-throat power struggles amognst barbarians fighting to the death. *shrug*

The game does get darker in some cases. It very much depends on what area you are in, the time of day, and even what the weather is like. It also depends somewhat on what graphics options you have turned on especially bloom.

 

[AnalogKid]

Wow, thanks for the timely reply, Steve. I hate to be a pest, but since I've got the chance, I'll follow up with a few more questions, then...

I get the feeling from your answers that each individual game is a lot shorter than I originally imagined, which is fine, so about how many games with one character would it take to "max out" your character? Maybe there's no actual max, but I imagine you understand what I mean, when personal advancement isn't really happening and it's probably time to start a new build? (even though I get that the strategic elements might be interesting over and over again even with the same char.)

Also:

Your character, all of your items, and your recruits will carry over into the new game, so you don't really lose that much... You can always start a new game with an old character.

How does one balance a more powerful starting character at the beginning of the game? Do you get to choose the covenants that are in the game, with some options being "higher-level" covenants?

 

[speeler]

I get the feeling from your answers that each individual game is a lot shorter than I originally imagined, which is fine, so about how many games with one character would it take to "max out" your character? Maybe there's no actual max, but I imagine you understand what I mean, when personal advancement isn't really happening and it's probably time to start a new build? (even though I get that the strategic elements might be interesting over and over again even with the same char.)

Frankly, I have no idea Levels go all the way up to 100, so you could probably play a ton of games with the same character if you wanted to. Also, each 25 levels opens up a new difficulty level similar to Diablo's nightmare and hell modes. Different quests, items, magic modifiers on items, monsters, covenants, and skills (kind of) are phased in at different times, so there is a lot of different content available over time. Sorry this isn't very specific. It really does depend on how fast your games go and how long you like to play the same character.

I guess I can give you an example of one of my testers. The last time I saw his character html he had a level 72 warrior that had won 33 games and lost 2.

How does one balance a more powerful starting character at the beginning of the game? Do you get to choose the covenants that are in the game, with some options being "higher-level" covenants?

You get to choose the level of the other covenants. So if you are using a lvl 20 character you can start a game with level 20 covenants for a fair fight, a game with level 15 covenants for an easy game, or a game with level 25 covenants for a tougher game. These levels are just examples btw, just like your character you can choose the other covenants level all of the way up to 100.

 

[AnalogKid]

... stuff ...

Not only timely answers, but good ones as well. Thankyouverymuch! [/end slurping]

Think you can give some PR tips to everyone's favorite Petey?

 

[Amasius]

Thanks for the infos, Steven. I've almost lost interest in your game (another action RPG ) but it seems that the strategie part can make up for the imho boring click-it-until-it-dies-combat.

 

[AnalogKid]

OK, now we're down to the picky little questions...

If one runs across the hero of another covenant out in the wilds somewhere, can you cut him down just to make him respawn back in town and hopefully lose valuable time? Or would this be like starting a covenant raid? The preview just mentioned that interaction with them outside of town was very limited.

Also, since each game is pretty short in terms of a character's progression (according to your example tester and your discussions), is there a motivation to actually _care_ about the outcome of any particular game? Do you get bonus lewt or somesuch for winning vs. getting your balls hacked off?

Other than getting to keep your balls, of course.

 

[Dhruin]

I'm pretty sure you can attack another hero - but only if you've declared war against that covenant; I didn't play with that much so some clarification might be good.

 

[speeler]

If one runs across the hero of another covenant out in the wilds somewhere, can you cut him down just to make him respawn back in town and hopefully lose valuable time? Or would this be like starting a covenant raid? The preview just mentioned that interaction with them outside of town was very limited.

If you are at war with the other covenant, you can kill them if you want. If you do kill them they will lose a little bit of their lifestone health, they will respawn back in town and won't adventure again for a little while, and their relationship with you will go down some.

Of course, they can try to do the same thing to you. So when you start getting into wars, everything becomes a little more dangerous.

If you're not at war with them, you can always declare war just to cut someone down. I've actually done this before to prevent them from killing a unique monster and stealing one of my quests

Also, since each game is pretty short in terms of a character's progression (according to your example tester and your discussions), is there a motivation to actually _care_ about the outcome of any particular game? Do you get bonus lewt or somesuch for winning vs. getting your balls hacked off?

Other than getting to keep your balls, of course.

Well a lot of this is still being tweaked, but at the moment you get a large reward chest that tends to contain a lot of items, has a much higher magic chance then usual, and has a greater chance to spawn higher level items than usual. So we try to give you a nice reward for winning.

 

[sabishii]

I'll definitely try this out.

Though, I wish there were a more traditional story-based RPG with AI competition.

 

[speeler]

Though, I wish there were a more traditional story-based RPG with AI competition.

By the time we release, we should have a lot more story then we do now. Actually we already have tons of story, it is just hidden away in the background stories. Anyways, I plan on implementing more of the current storyline into the game so that the player actively plays through more of it then they do now.