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First of all - I know that developers have some budget and their own concept and wont rewrite it. So my ideas are not some random thoughts. Instead its based mostly on things you - Larian staff - already did in D2. Its like an enhanced version of D2. I omitted obvious things (better quests, more loot, more types of monsters) - those add some variety, some fun, but dont do much to game as a whole (except more elaborate quests). I will focus only on three main ideas.


Blocking in fights:

Fight system used in D2 is outdated for a big RPG. Active blocking would do MUCH to whole experience. Something like Risen would be ok. Its not hard to learn for non-hardcore players yet it adds new tactical and action element to fights (reflexes and experience will learn you when to block and how to move/attack) - much better feel of accomplishment when you defeat strong opponent.
But it could be extended. Each type of weapon could differ in several cathegories - ability to block (!), speed, damage. For example:
- Shields - by far the best in blocking, can block strong attacks (strong humans/monsters), partially blocks giant punches of bosses (wyverns/behemoths/giants) - they are so strong they will knock you down even in block, but its better than no block at all. Ability to strike with shield (very low range strikes)
- Swords - "balanced" weapon, moderate damage, moderate speed, moderate blocking - partially block strong attacks (depends on weapon), cant block giant punches
- Axes/Maces - big damage, slow/moderate speed, weak blocking - can block normal attacks (depends on weapon), cant block strong attacks or giant punches
- Spears/Polearms - big damage, moderate speed, weak blocking - in low range cant block at all, very weak attack in low range - you must keep distance from enemy, but if you hit in right moment, you will score critical strike (spears are deadly vs armor if used properly)

Two handed weapons have usually bigger damage and a little better blocking (you are holding them in two hands), but slower speed.
Fight with two weapons can be deadly, but hard to learn and sometimes very risky vs giant opponents - they can crush you in seconds if you dont use shield. In depends also on enemy skills - his speed, range of attack etc.
To balance advantages of shield - it will make your attacks or moves a little slower thus harder to hit. Better defense - a little worse attack.

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Let players attack ground units in dragon form:

This is feature all fans are waiting for! Of course it means that mobs should react to your dragon. Normal mobs will run to shelter but you would be able to burn it. If they will hide in a wood, you could burn them along with a trees. If they will hide in cave, you will have no other choice than to kill them as human. Also it could be great if players should make havoc in enemy castles or camps -burn tents, damage towers etc. (of course with limitations, no completely destructable terrain - I dont expect Larian to have as big budget as Bioware).
- To make it balanced, dragon form could have time limit (and longer cooldown). If player exceeds limit, he will fly down and transform back to human.
- Another level of balancing could be bigger difficulty. Make more enemies able to hurt a dragon - for example lesser giants will attack human in close combat, but if you use dragon form, they will throw big boulders to you. Create more towers with balistas on hilltops.
- Third level of balancing - as a human you are mostly "forgettable" but if you use dragon form too often, rumors will spread. Concequences - enemy leaders would be forced to hire some formidable group of dragon hunters or more stronger flying foes. Human warrior dont attract such attention and can hide much more easily than dragon.
- Fourth level of balancing - make some enemies partially resistant to fire or give them ability to heal.

So the dragon will remain powerful, yet players couldnt act like uber-strong machine. They will often choose - use dragon, kill bigger targets in a group and finish the rest as human or dont use dragon at all and save your skill to more dangerous adversary (cooldown, cooldown...).

Last edited by Farflame; 26/01/10 12:33 PM.
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And third idea - Upgrade whole "dragon thing":

For me its not mere skill, its more like an story element. Bring us more dragon lore. For example: create some location (mountains, underground tunnels) habitated with big but intelligent monsters (legendary giants, wyverns, behemoths). You will need to talk to them to solve a quest or to find a way through this dangerous location. But - they will not speak to human. You will have to use dragon form to get there and solve the quest. Also as dragon you have much more respect - there may live creatures that could serve you if you frighten them or kill their leader (they will serve only dragon, not puny human). These servants could be hired if you conquer some type of "dragon tower" (dragon fortress in a big cave) and make it your home.


Example of a quest - Myth of Mother Beast

Imagine there is small mountain/underground realm of giants. No road to get there for a human. Monsters live mostly secluded from other world. There are few tribes - tribe of cyclops, fire giants and wyverns. Each has some leader/king and adore few deities. But all tribes share one ancient myth - it serves as basic concept of their promitive religion. Myth about Mother Beast. They believe that their mountain world were created by one deity - they call it Mother Beast. But this deity was trapped by its own greedy son in an underground city made of gold. They believe that Mother Beast is sleeping for an ages in some formidable trap builded in a city. All tribes are searching for it, but never found it. There is a prophecy that one messiah will find this city, release Mother Beast and get huge power from that beast deity.

This myth is a part of their social hierarchy. King of each tribe fight for a throne in a series of challenges. They believe that the victor is not only their king, but also that messiah and will lead tribe to power. But when you - as a dragon - unexpectedly come to this world they will soon start to realise that a dragon, king of all beasts, may be the right messiah. And each tribe will try to persuade you to help them. Of course actual kings may hate you because you are threat to their rule. But some of their believers may think otherwise. So this is interesting battleground for some elaborate plot - searching for a Mother Beast. Player will choose the tribe he will help/cheat, but has to be careful about actual kings - some may attack without hesitation (and loose), smarter kings may try to use player as their puppet and then betray him. You will have to be smart (and strong) - even in dragon form you are not strong enough to kill whole tribe of giants. And one more solution - the player could decide to cheat all tribes and get reward only for himself - fantasy parallel to Clint Eastwood's gunfighter in Dolar trilogy.

And another piece of the story. Recently this realm of giants is invaded by some unknown race of monsters (umber hulks?). They are strong and plentiful and all tribes are their enemies. It seems that these umber hulks are also searching for Mother Beast. So you will have to be smart to defeat all obstacles and ultimately - meet the mythical Mother Beast. Or is it only a legend and is there some unexpected surprise waiting in that legendary city of gold? I believe it could be very captivating quest if done properly.


IMHO Dragon form is great feature. Dont add more fantasy races and other generic stuff - there are plenty of RPGs that do this. Concentrate on player's dragon and dragon lore/story - this could be "flag ship" of Divinity series in the future.

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Note for readers: please DONT post here all your ideas. Its meant only for bigger ideas about game system, quests etc. No chat about loot, respawn, better animations and similar stuff.

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Sweet Idea

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Which idea do you mean?

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What I find a great idea is this:

Example of a quest - Myth of Mother Beast

laugh wink

I love it to read something like this you written down here! I'm sure you have much fantasy, great thing!! smile


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Originally Posted by Farflame
Let players attack ground units in dragon form:

This is feature all fans are waiting for!


Correcting : This is the features all action players are waiting for.

Especially all those Action-RPG lovers, who want Divinity 2 to become a full-fledged Action-RPG like Sacred, Titan Quest and so on, and discard the "Story-RPG" heritage.



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Originally Posted by AlrikFassbauer
Originally Posted by Farflame
Let players attack ground units in dragon form:

This is feature all fans are waiting for!


Correcting : This is the features all action players are waiting for.

Especially all those Action-RPG lovers, who want Divinity 2 to become a full-fledged Action-RPG like Sacred, Titan Quest and so on, and discard the "Story-RPG" heritage.


That is why people are buying game
They don"t wanna fly
They wanna fry
They wanna be new horror form sky


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The problem with your dragon form being unrestrained is if it can attack everything then your human form would be used less. Of course you would need to use it for caves and buildings and other interior areas. One thing that could be done is more anti-dragon zones be used. Not sure what the setting for the next game would be but I assume Damian would control most of Rivellon. If so most areas would have ADZ's, while you could bring most or all down you'd have to use your human form to disable them and then your dragon form could be used to fight the dragon defenses along with mop up anyone you missed. Another thing that could be done is you get an EXP penalty for using your dragon form on non-dragon enemies.

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This is the problem, you can't really balance it. I would just give the player wings and thats it if it was my decision, like you get in aion, maybe even only for flying and not even fighting, hey they may be dragon knights, but learning to fly with a use of magic or something given from dragons will make more sense then tunning into a dragon out of the blue anyway. Going all dragon form is just a headache for the devs. I can only think of special levels that are meant to be played in dragon form that can attack ground units as a way to fix the unbalance that comes if they so chose to give u that option.

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Originally Posted by Joram
Example of a quest - Myth of Mother Beast
I love it to read something like this you written down here! I'm sure you have much fantasy, great thing!! smile


Thanks for your positive approach. I like to write stories or create intricate quest concepts/scenarios for fantasy settings (not straightforward action, fight with big evil). I would like to use my imagination for some CRPG like Divinity but its hardly possible. I'm not sure if developer teams would cooperate with externs working on some additional quest design or something. smile

---

Zomgnome, 30Johner: guys, I wrote here several useable options to balance this feature. To make some zones unaccessible by dragon is another one - a little forced but easy to implement and functional option. This feature CAN be balanced and I'm sure that Larian team is more than capable to do so. Bigger problem is probably budget/time than unability to balance it.


Originally Posted by AlrikFassbauer

Correcting : This is the features all action players are waiting for.


Why are you so bad-tempered, Alrik? I regret simplification of RPGs as much as you do. As you can see in my example of a "dragon quest" I prefer story to action, cunning to brute force and myths/mysteries to generic fight-with-big-demon scenarios.

I think that its NATURAL for a dragon to be able to fight also on ground. It could enhance the action but not only an action. It could be used also for gameplay/quests. Imagine for example this quest - you must save NPC arrested by enemies in some castle. There could be many approaches to this situation - infiltrate the castle, direct attack, offer ransom etc. But what about dragon attack on castle to scare enemies? You could threat them that you have a dragon to your disposal, then perform an attack to show them you mean it serious (of course you wont be able to destroy whole castle). Later they could accept your terms and hand that NPC over to you.

So its not always black/white as you might insist. I would be more happy with better story, lore and characters, but it doesnt mean I couldnt enjoy better action features as well.

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Originally Posted by 30johner
The problem with your dragon form being unrestrained is if it can attack everything then your human form would be used less. Of course you would need to use it for caves and buildings and other interior areas. One thing that could be done is more anti-dragon zones be used. Not sure what the setting for the next game would be but I assume Damian would control most of Rivellon. If so most areas would have ADZ's, while you could bring most or all down you'd have to use your human form to disable them and then your dragon form could be used to fight the dragon defenses along with mop up anyone you missed. Another thing that could be done is you get an EXP penalty for using your dragon form on non-dragon enemies.


Like this idea. The best I have heard so far smile

The problem with Dragon vs ground is what others in different threads have already said:

1) either game is too easy, or you do not feel like a all powerful dragon, Master/Lord of the Skies etc. because everything would be able to kill your dragon

2) Human form would be at a severe disadvantaged and you could lose the sense of being a Dragon Knight, rather then a Dragon(many arguments to this, I know).

3) Some others I am sure :D, but can't think of at this moment, besides that the game would have to be drastically changed

I also like the idea that you do not gain much exp points if killing ground things as dragon, so that it punished players who are all powerful dragon all the time, till they have to be a human.

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Originally Posted by sloo_monster

1) either game is too easy, or you do not feel like a all powerful dragon, Master/Lord of the Skies etc. because everything would be able to kill your dragon


Noone said everything could hurt you in dragon form. Also the feel "of being someone" is very personal. Each player cares about different things and I dont want to draw into personal preferences. Here we talk about opinions of several features/game content, not feelings.



Originally Posted by sloo_monster

2) Human form would be at a severe disadvantaged and you could lose the sense of being a Dragon Knight, rather then a Dragon(many arguments to this, I know).


Not true. There were already written many options to balance it. I wont repeat them again. One of them is cooldown - you cant change to dragon all the time. And EXP penalty for using dragon is also possibility - it was already mentioned.


Its mainly matter of budget and design decision (should we expand this dragon feature in next episodes or not?). It would be probably best if someone from Larian would be so kind (and courageous wink ) and comment ideas in this topic (especially from first posts). Virumor, Greever, Lar, anyone who needs a little break from work on D2 expansion? bow

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Actually, at some point that feature was in, but it was taking up too much memory and performance, so we had to remove it. We would've liked to have it in, and did realize it reduced the coolness. It's still high on my list of things I really wanted in.

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aloha just wanted to ask if anybody noticed that there are no children in the whole game if not then maybe it's just me ,there are children in divine divinity like the kid who pees in the church and annoyed a bunch of see-through fiends hmmmm.... maybe its Larian way of telling us that everybody is infertile in Rivellon in which case humanity in Rivellon will cease to exist

How......whats the word, oh yeah!!......defeatist!



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Would you keep your kids around with increasing conflict with imps and goblins, food shortages, etc? Presumably there are safer places in Rivellon that families near the main conflicts evacuated to. There was a couple in the bandit camp, planning to get out of there after the woman got pregnant...

Also, maybe gassing the Broken Valley Daycare and Playful Pony Funtime Activity Centre wouldn't have gone over very well with ratings boards.

evil

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Originally Posted by Raze

Also, maybe gassing the Broken Valley Daycare and Playful Pony Funtime Activity Centre wouldn't have gone over very well with ratings boards.

evil


That had me laughing way too hard when I should have been working lol

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Also, maybe gassing the Broken Valley Daycare and Playful Pony Funtime Activity Centre wouldn't have gone over very well with ratings boards.

evil [/quote]


Sure would have made the game more intresting thats for sure but i see your point kinda its just odd how a group of 40 people never had children but its a game and im getting carried away next thing ill be talking about is why llamas and lemurs aren't in the game.......

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Originally Posted by Lar_q
Actually, at some point that feature was in, but it was taking up too much memory and performance, so we had to remove it. We would've liked to have it in, and did realize it reduced the coolness. It's still high on my list of things I really wanted in.


So there is possibility you can do it for D3. Thanks for answer, Lar.

BTW would you be so kind once more and tell us what do you think about that example of dragon quest on second post (Myth of the Mother Beast)? It's an "epic/dark" quest designed for dragon or for both human and dragon form. I believe something like this could be shaped to original and captivating quest in RPG genre. Not only for the background story but also for the need to use "the best of both worlds" (dragon/human - to choose right form for each situation, dont get cought as human by enemy giants etc.), both brain and brawl, to save your skin in dangerous world ruled by giants and finally outsmart them all. Is it something you could think about for future Divinity games?

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yeah i have noticed that Urath, that there are no kids in Rivellon. It was around Orubios Fjords that i noticed that there were no kid NPC's anywhere. lol

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