Of course even a character with maxed out charisma who is a very clever manipulator shouldn't (and wouldn't) realistically be able to sway a zealot like The Preacher away from his beliefs. That makes perfect sense. However, would high charisma, social skills and some intelligence offer some leeway in terms of what they might find tolerable from you? So, for example, maybe being able to talk down a paranoid psycho like the Gunfighter down in a situation where he becomes suspicious of you or someone around you.
Yes (otherwise it's game-over for non-combat oriented characters). Basically, you won't be able to change people who travel with you but if your skills are high enough you will be able to "handle" them where it makes sense. The Colonel won't become loyal and trustworthy but you can keep him on your side if he thinks that yours is a better deal, etc.
I presented 4 best gunmen who might join you. These are top tier guys, men who kill for a living or to stay alive. They survived where countless others have not. They aren't nice and friendly guys looking for a hug or a guy to bond with and follow everywhere.
If they are so hard to get and travel with, does that mean player will actually need best gunmen around? What will justify existence of risky companions? Is it extra content, or the fact that player actually won't be able to solo everything like in AoD?
Reason #1 - if you want to fight your way through the game, you will need all the firepower and skill you can handle. Reason #2 - optional content these guys bring to the table. Reason #3 - role-playing/different experience.
But again - they aren't hard to get and they aren't hard to travel with, provided you hire them for the right reasons and resists the urge to fuck them over and/or do what you want to do without giving a fuck about what they want to do.
Can you bluff factions when there's someone with you who hates them? For example, can you agree to do something for the church to get access to their resources maybe, and tell the wastelander that it's just a bluff so he wont turn on you (since you haven't actually done anything for them yet)? I mean, I guess what I'm trying to say is that do NPCs recognize that you might fake alliance to someone, and not just ragequit the party or turn on you? Maybe a way to let them know beforehand, see if they're willing to play along.
The structure is somewhat different.
http://www.irontowerstudio.com/forum/index.php/topic,7181.0.html
Before we talk about the CSG’s main quest design, let’s talk about the AoD’s main quest to illustrate some points without spoiling anything.
"The main quest started vague – "go I know not where, bring back I know not what", and then the faction quests took over as the meat of the game. Essentially, the game wasn’t about finding the temple but instead working for the factions and slowly uncovering what happened in the past. By the time you’ve visited all 3 cities and learned what you can about the factions, the war, and the gods, you know where the temple is and you're ready to make your choice. That fairly important choice affects the ending slides, but not gameplay because the game is almost over at this point.
Naturally, we want to do better. So in the CSG we’ll get rid of the vagueness, move the main quest to the center stage, push the factions’ quests back, and allow you to make key choices earlier and thus enjoy the consequences earlier.
It will start simple – while scavenging you stumble upon something clearly valuable, a long-forgotten device that wasn’t meant to be used until the ship lands (but can be used in-flight). Not being an expert on such things, you need to know exactly what this thing is to figure out what one of the factions will pay for it, which is a good way to introduce you to the three main factions in Act 1, whereas in AoD the Noble Houses were introduced one Act at a time for storytelling reasons (escalating events):
Once you know what that device is (at about 30% of the game), you’ll offer it to the faction of your choice, at which point your relationship with the other factions will go down, introducing an aspect we didn’t really touch in AoD – factions acting against you, attacking your base of operations, and turning locations under their influence against you, which will boost replayability.
At about 70% of the game, you might realize (via learning more about the ship if you’re smart enough) that what you’re doing might not necessary be what’s best for the ship (or you personally) and get an option to do things in a very different, "fuck all factions" way. The remaining 30% of the game will be dedicated to each path within this fork, presenting different challenges and choices. So far, that’s 3 'working for a faction' paths, 3 'fuck 'em' paths, and 7 different endings without counting permutations.
This way you’ll get to play through your key decisions, instead of being told about what happened next in the slides. Obviously, the slides will still be there but gameplay-to-slides ratio will be different."
I really like the idea about the customizable robot with options depending on character skills.
VD, will there be a possibility to alter/influence other NPC's skills n stats (i.e. PST) through hard dialogue checks?
Undecided. It made sense in PST but I'm not sure it would work as well in this game. Right now your "reward" for having deep conversations (loaded with stat- and skill-checks) with your party members is unique and powerful feats.
