Getting bored....(minor spoilers)

[crpgnut]

I had a two day layoff from Prelude and attempted to get back into it last night. I'm at
the entrance to the Barrier and I just can't seem to get motivated enough to finish the game. I think I know the reason why and I'll try to explain. In the beginning of the game
you really don't know what all the skills are about. It's exciting to see what nature does exactly, the difference between a 10 barter skill and a 20 barter skill, etc. By the time you reach the Barrier you're fully aware of what the skills do, no reason to continue
based on that. In the beginning you really don't know how many creatures there are or the best way to fight them. By now though, I'm aware that the game is basically 500 combats with bandits with the occasional lupin, cave dweller, river dragon thrown in.
There may be some more interesting combats with tougher creatures but I've fought
all of the basic types for the most part. There really is only a handful of monster types in the whole game. No reason to continue based on that. In the beginning of the game, the plot is surrounded in mystery and you don't have a clue what's going on. But now I pretty much know and it's just a matter of following a very linear path to reach the end of the game. The magic system in games is very important to me. The magic system in
Prelude is very simplistic. You get three extremely similar spells every so often as the game progresses as a flame mage. In the goddess realm you get both slow and root, which do almost exactly the same thing. Root is slow, but better. Thaumaturges get
spells that enchant things for a very short duration. Been there, done that.

The only real reason to keep playing is for the quests. They have been uniformly interesting til now. I'm sure that the remaining quests are just as interesting. I have
a feeling that there might be a real dungeon in the game before the end too. Unfortunately, I'm not going to have the staying power to reach it. I thought that the
Citadel sewers was going to be a dungeon, but it was just a few minimal combats
and almost no treasure. You didn't learn any grand plot designs. I think I miss exploring the most in the game. There's nothing to explore outside of the cities. The landscape is
empty except for dungeons that are mentioned in one of the towns. Again these are extremely small affairs too. Maybe 2-3 rooms at the most.

I got my money's worth out of this game, easily. It has some interesting ideas and
some great quests. My suggestions for the next game would be to move things
out of the cities a lot more. It seems like 90% of the game is played within the confines
of the towns and cities. Make the nature skill be like the description. Make finding herbs and making potions a viable way to earn money. Give our characters a reason to wander the wilderness. There should be bandit hideouts galore, with gold and treasure to be found. Beef up the spell system. I have a character that at the beginning of the game can do 5-7 points of damage with the flame snake spell. I played him up to level 53 in the skill and it still only does about 11-13 damage. I need more progress than that.
I'd rather see bigger combats where my mage gets a chance to take out several foes with one spell. On a similar note, give the bandits some healers and mages too. In 1.41 the bandits were given more bows, now balance them the rest of the way. A high level slow spell should effect an area instead of one foe. What about mass healing? If I could heal one guy at level 10 in a skill shouldn't I be able to heal 4 at level 40? These are just a few ideas. Improve barter, music and stealth so that they have more meaning. Music has got to be the most useless skill in the game. Add magical instruments that slow foes, bless party members or do damage. Music will be viable then. Barter need to go up much faster and there should be high level potions and armors to buy. How about 5000 gold piece Ornate Plate of the Goddess. Make Thaumaturgy enchantments permanent at the
cost of an attribute point. That'd be cool.

Don't take this as a negative post. I loved the game for quite a while. I will still try to encourage people to play it. It has some good foundations. I am looking forward to
Prelude 2 and I may go back and finish this some day. It just lost its appeal in the long run to me. SP, Maced, Vault Dweller and others have fun. I hope you finish the game.

 

[Vault Dweller]

Crpgnut, you touch the topic familiar to every crpg nut (sorry for the pun) out there including myself. I often find myself bored after the skills are 'maxed', all enemies are fought many times over, and no surprises let in the game. I like rpgs for development, and that usually stops after 2/3 of any game. I like to reply F1, 2 every now and then, and F2 gets boring by the time you reach SF and buy yourself a gauss rifle.

I often thought about it in my own campaigns, and frankly it's hard to find a balance. If you keep throwing at players harder monsters rewarding with a sword-of-holy-ass-kicking +5, the game looses its focus. So when you take the fun of skill building away, what left is the story, the settings, the sense of exploration, and interactivness with the game world. I felt with Morrowing exactly the way you feel now. What makes me keep going is the exploration I did not have since Fallout and interactivness. I like the way quests are handled, the way many NPCs have a story to tell that makes sense, etc. As for the story, it's ok so far ( I was told to go see the Goddess ). It's no P:T, but then again what game is. But so far the story is much better than in many many games I played lately. I keep my fingers crossed for Lionheart and Jefferson though.

My only concern with your suggestions, which I respect and wish to discuss with you in this post is that right now Prelude has a very disctinctive 'personality' unlike most of the games I played lately. Although I hope to see more then simply more of the same in Prelude2, I also hope that the original spirit would be preserved.

You say that your mage does only 11-13 damage, but unlike other games HPs don't go up. An average critter has 40-50 hp which could be brought down with a few hits. It would be terribly overpowering to have a mage dealing 60-80 area effect damage, would not you agree? I really enjoy playing thaumaturgist who use magic to add a little spice to his set of throwing daggers insead of calling thunders and belching liquid fire. Personally I like small-time characters, I am sick and tired of playing god-like heroes who can take destroy armies and devastate cities. My mage could not handle the complexity of high level spells and stick to the one, the only one that worked for him. He can throw 4 charged daggers in a blink of an eye. As for your suggestion to make enchantments permanent at the cost of an attribute would prompt players to seek out a thaumaturgist, pump him up for perms and leave behind a shell of a man with no attrributes left .

I totally agree with you on more stuff to do especially for combat oriented parties, more encounters with tougher bandits, more skilled opponents, may be even bandit controlled
areas like forests. I never really cared for Robin Hood anyway

 

[CP]

Don't take this as a negative post. I loved the game for quite a while. I will still try to encourage people to play it. It has some good foundations. I am looking forward to
Prelude 2 and I may go back and finish this some day. It just lost its appeal in the long run to me. SP, Maced, Vault Dweller and others have fun. I hope you finish the game.

Sorry to hear that your interest fizzled out toward the end game. But I think we can work on that.

Simply put, your biggest complaint involves easy changes. Not too many have gotten as far as you so we just haven't had much of an opportunity to adjust gameplay based on people's feedback.

We very much want to keep the pace of the game intense up until the end. There are a couple of ways I can think of doing this. If it's important to people and means that crpgnut will finish the game :wink: , we will do it. Here are a couple of ideas:

1. Originally there were meant to be a passive skill bonus once the player reached a certain skill level. For lack of time, we decided to implement those only for combat (i.e. when you reach 40 in sword you can spin). For example, when you reached 40 in Tinker you could build a clockwork man to fight for you. When you reached 40 lit/lore you could write a novel. When you reached 40 barter you could open a shop. Etc, etc.

2. We could add different random events for later in the game. I'm sure everyone's save the peddler from the lupins, fixed the wheel and encountered the abandoned battlefield. There's room for a lot more stuff like this that only happens once people are later in the game.

3. Increase random event frequency.

4. We can also place more people/creatures/quests in random places in the valley. Vagrant camps, hovels with hermits, bump into something strange etc. These can lead to more quests or have more stuff to barter making exploring more fun.

5. Maybe it should take more skill points to get through the main plot. That may create more of a sense of gaining xp from sidequests. It would certainly be easy enough to make the dark path/archives/goddess quests much more difficult.

6. There was something else I forgot.

Anyway, do you think these would help? Thanks.


CP
President/Designer

 

[CP]

6. There was something else I forgot.

OK now I remember. If anyone has thoughts on endgame random events or encounters in the woods PLEASE POST. We will make this end game as good as people had hoped and your feedback will really help.

We will integrate good ideas.

Thanks.


CP[/u]

 

[crpgnut]

Vault Dweller, we disagree a little on what is fun then. We're on the same page for awhile though. I like character development probably more than anything else in crpgs.
I want my character to improve from the beginning of the game until the end. With that goal in mind, if the enemies skills also do not improve then combat becomes boring and repetitive very quickly. If my skills don't change drastically from where they start, then there is no reason for a skill in the first place. It's just a number that grows for no
real reason other than to show you that you've played X number of hours. The combat and armor skills are largely like this. I don't see much difference between my beginning abilities and now. I started the game with zero missile skills and equipped everyone with
a longbow or shortbow. I have approximately 30 points in missile, give or take 5, for every character. They still hit roughly the same and for the same damage that they did in Kellen. No improvement. Not only that, but there are no bows that I can buy that are skill/damage related. If I got the reward of better bows for higher skills, then raising the skill would have meaning. As it is, it's just a number that means I've fought X number of creatures with a bow. No reward for my missile efforts.

You like that hitpoints and damage don't change much based on advancing in the game, I hate it. Why have a thaumaturge if his spells don't make a huge difference in the outcome of battles. Spend the points on speed instead of willpower and hit one extra time per round. It'll have the same/better effect. I want the massive spells of destruction for a higher level character. Without them, why raise the skill? Flame mages are almost
useless in the game. A character with a greatsword will hit for much more damage than
the flamesnake ever will. Not to mention bandits are generally immune to flame spells. Rarely does it hurt human-based characters. My problem is that battle 478 is almost exactly like battle 1. Same amount of damage, same creatures, same hitpoints, etc.

You mention exploration, which is where this game fails completely. I'm not sure what
game you played but saying that Morrowind doesn't have exploration and Prelude does is wrong! Morrowind has the best exploration factor of any game ever made. It's the trump card of that game in my opinion. Characters become too powerful combat-wise way too quickly in Morrowind, that was its initial failing. It was rectified my mod-makers but that's what eventually killed the fun factor in Morrowind for me. Of course, I played for about 300 hours before that happened. Prelude has zero reason for looking over the next hill. If an NPC didn't mention a dungeon while you were in town, it doesn't exist. I spent one day just wandering the countryside, looking for dungeons and meaningful encounters that weren't part of one of the town storylines. I found nothing. Fallout and Morrowind both had wonderful random encounters. Storyline alone won't keep me intersted in a game. I found Planescape: Torment to be an adventure game, mostly.
You don't pick your character, it's picked for you. Your companions all have long stories
that you read. It was an interactive book with very little roleplaying involved at all. It was like one of those choose-your-own-story books that used to come out. I gave up on Planescape in the city where you find Fall From Grace. I was bored of all the reading and was looking for some action or exploration outside of the storybook. It didn't exist.
Morrowind had several storybooks. Fortunately you could choose to go explore for a while and come back to them. There is some incredible writing in Morrowind, if you choose to go that route. They didn't force you too though, like they did in PT. Again we
have a little bit different tastes here.

One thing that Prelude nailed was the economic system. It might be the best one I've seen in a crpg ever. You're never rolling in so much money that you can buy all of
Citadel without denting your wallet. I see we agree somewhat on combats. The difference is in how each of us wants to resolve the problem. You would like a bandit-infested forest, where you might fight 15-20 battles with the current crop of monsters. I would like the monsters to be tougher and more skilled. I'd love to fight a group of flame bandits, with a decent healer. Your combat would go like this. Fight group a, heal, fight group b, heal, etc all through the woods, I think. My combat would go like this. There is a large bandit group, say 20-25 bandits. My tank fighters form a line that my mage and priestess stand behind. I have two archers flanking my magic users. We're heavily outnumbered so my mage throws a 50 skill flame burst. It hits 7 bandits and they're charred to ash. Good job! Now he's spent most of his magic pool, but 7 bandits died. The flame mage now has to resort to a flame arrow type of attack because he can't throw another huge spell. We're still heavily outnumbered though, so my priestess throws mass slow. Now bandits 8-15 are walking in a swamp and won't reach my frontline guys for several rounds. My thaumaturge tank then throws lightning on his throwing axes and gives them to the archer behind him. The archer throws 3, hits with one but it does 35 damage, killing a thug. My next archer hits with all four of her arrows, killing another. That leaves bandits 18-25 free to advance to my front line and the second round begins. In this round, I won't be able to throw another fire burst but I can still kill
a couple of bandits with lesser spells. The enemy spellcaster frees his slowed companions but had to come within arrow range to do so. We drop him but now we're getting surrounded up front. Priestess throws root on the two toughest frontline guys, freezing them so they help protect our line. To me my battle seems much more fun and exciting to fight than yours. It's a matter of taste though, I agree.

 

[Vault Dweller]

When you reached 40 barter you could open a shop

Ummm, what a wonderfull idea! To have my own shop where I would sell my loot to all kind of adventurer-wannabes, why I might even enjoy a quest to intercept a heavily guarded caravan to another store, and then protect my store when pissed off competition hire assassins....ah, the possibilities. And my charismatically gifted party buddy can make a speech in a tavern about upcoming invasion thus making town folks to rush into my store and buy everything at a nice mark up. That's how you play an evil character :twisted:

You know what? A store is too settling down, make it a wagon that can travel with me to every city a-la Fallout car (but watch the trunk ) That way I can target more people not only demographically but geographically too

 

[CP]

I want the massive spells of destruction for a higher level character. Without them, why raise the skill? Flame mages are almost
useless in the game.

I have to disagree that Flame mages are completely useless. Sentinal is perhaps the most powerful spell in the game.

Improving flame magic spell power may very well be a good idea though. Do most people agree. I know that I never used a flame mage in my party. I wanted to because I thought they were cool and liked the history behind them, but as party members they didn't hold their weight unless they doubled as talkers.

My problem is that battle 478 is almost exactly like battle 1. Same amount of damage, same creatures, same hitpoints, etc.

Upping endgame combat difficulty is fairly easy for us to implement.

You mention exploration, which is where this game fails completely. Prelude has zero reason for looking over the next hill. If an NPC didn't mention a dungeon while you were in town, it doesn't exist. I spent one day just wandering the countryside, looking for dungeons and meaningful encounters that weren't part of one of the town storylines. I found nothing. Fallout and Morrowind both had wonderful random encounters.

I addressed this in an earlier posting. We do have random encounters though. As I mentioned, changing, adding and adjusting frequencing of endgame randoms is not too hard.

I'd love to fight a group of flame bandits, with a decent healer. Your combat would go like this. Fight group a, heal, fight group b, heal, etc all through the woods, I think. My combat would go like this. There is a large bandit group, say 20-25 bandits. My tank fighters form a line that my mage and priestess stand behind. I have two archers flanking my magic users. We're heavily outnumbered so my mage throws a 50 skill flame burst. It hits 7 bandits and they're charred to ash. Good job! Now he's spent most of his magic pool, but 7 bandits died. The flame mage now has to resort to a flame arrow type of attack because he can't throw another huge spell. We're still heavily outnumbered though, so my priestess throws mass slow. Now bandits 8-15 are walking in a swamp and won't reach my frontline guys for several rounds. My thaumaturge tank then throws lightning on his throwing axes and gives them to the archer behind him. The archer throws 3, hits with one but it does 35 damage, killing a thug. My next archer hits with all four of her arrows, killing another. That leaves bandits 18-25 free to advance to my front line and the second round begins. In this round, I won't be able to throw another fire burst but I can still kill
a couple of bandits with lesser spells. The enemy spellcaster frees his slowed companions but had to come within arrow range to do so. We drop him but now we're getting surrounded up front. Priestess throws root on the two toughest frontline guys, freezing them so they help protect our line. To me my battle seems much more fun and exciting to fight than yours. It's a matter of taste though, I agree.

Adding enemy spell casters was somethign we scrapped at the end as well. It may be possible to add this as well. How much do you think this would add to the game?


Thanks.


CP

 

[crpgnut]

Don't take this as a negative post. I loved the game for quite a while. I will still try to encourage people to play it. It has some good foundations. I am looking forward to
Prelude 2 and I may go back and finish this some day. It just lost its appeal in the long run to me. SP, Maced, Vault Dweller and others have fun. I hope you finish the game.

Sorry to hear that your interest fizzled out toward the end game. But I think we can work on that.

Simply put, your biggest complaint involves easy changes. Not too many have gotten as far as you so we just haven't had much of an opportunity to adjust gameplay based on people's feedback.

We very much want to keep the pace of the game intense up until the end. There are a couple of ways I can think of doing this. If it's important to people and means that crpgnut will finish the game :wink: , we will do it. Here are a couple of ideas:

1. Originally there were meant to be a passive skill bonus once the player reached a certain skill level. For lack of time, we decided to implement those only for combat (i.e. when you reach 40 in sword you can spin). For example, when you reached 40 in Tinker you could build a clockwork man to fight for you. When you reached 40 lit/lore you could write a novel. When you reached 40 barter you could open a shop. Etc, etc.

These are interesting ideas, CP. I'm not sure if I'm at level 40 in any of the combat skills.
Maybe in the bow skill. I focused on ranged combat. If the opponents have the same hit
points and don't outnumber me greatly they already fall like chaff. I haven't been to the
Path of Darkness, nor fought any Advanced Cave Dwellers. I'm losing interest before I
head there.

2. We could add different random events for later in the game. I'm sure everyone's save the peddler from the lupins, fixed the wheel and encountered the abandoned battlefield. There's room for a lot more stuff like this that only happens once people are later in the game.

This would definitely help a great deal.

3. Increase random event frequency.

Not sure about this. I've seen Elkas the hunter so many times I want to kill him
and the thaumaturge biddy who whines.

4. We can also place more people/creatures/quests in random places in the valley. Vagrant camps, hovels with hermits, bump into something strange etc. These can lead to more quests or have more stuff to barter making exploring more fun.

This would be a goddess-send!!!!

5. Maybe it should take more skill points to get through the main plot. That may create more of a sense of gaining xp from sidequests. It would certainly be easy enough to make the dark path/archives/goddess quests much more difficult.

Never got to any of these places, the boredom set in for me before here. I'm at Barrier
for the first time. I'm following the leads of the poisoned Flame Lord, and delivering
a Fed-Ex deal for the rebellion, IIRC.

6. There was something else I forgot.

Anyway, do you think these would help? Thanks.

Bartering and Nature need some boosting. So does stealth. I didn't create a stealth character, but if a high stealth/tinker character could rob some banks or get a nice
weapon by picking a hard to open weapons case, etc. My main complaint has been
with high-level spells. I have a 50 skill in Flame magic and I really can't do anything
neat with it. If I flame a weapon, that weapon should do some serious damage, but for it to do some serious damage there needs to be a worthy challenge. There may be later in the game but I haven't reached it. I can honestly say that, so far, I haven't had but two challenging combats. One was a random encounter with 3 river dragons that were right on top of us, so range combats was ineffective. The other was when I fought 9 bandits, then was assaulted by 5 pennigers, and then 6 more bandits with no rest in between.
My goddess chick was actually useful in that battle. She got to root the pennigers and
slow the bandit archers. Good fight.

CP
President/Designer

 

[crpgnut]

Endgame ideas (Spoilers)

CP, I haven't been to the endgame but I have a few thoughts on how I imagine it. No idea
how the game ends because I try not to read any posts with the words Jerrock, Dark Path, etc in them. I'm guessing that at some point in the game your characters will arrive on the Isle of the Goddess. Maybe she's been imprisoned somehow, I don't know, but I
think we'll end up there. If so, I think she should reward party members that have followed her faithfully. Those who have saved the lupins in Kellen, saved the wounded silkie, saved the whales (sorry), saved the Albino Monkey, etc. If she would recognize and reward the party for their efforts in these areas, that'd be neat. I know she rewards you with a goddess spell for most of these, but an additional award for those who do them all would be cool. Is this the type of stuff you're looking for?

 

[Vault Dweller]

want my character to improve from the beginning of the game until the end. With that goal in mind, if the enemies skills also do not improve then combat becomes boring and repetitive very quickly. If my skills don't change drastically from where they start, then there is no reason for a skill in the first place.

I agree with you here. I believe I wrote that I would like to have tougher bandits. I think that toghest that I fought so far was Leutenant (not counting the Captain in the sewers).
I know what you mean it's just I'm not sure what the solution might be. The problem for me with fighting progressively tougher enemies with progressively deadlier weapons is the feeling of ...I don't know...unreal situation. Let's say i start in a city A and kill a bunch of A type monsters laying siege to the city, then I move on down the alphabet till I reach bad guys fortress Z guarded by progressively harder bad boys Z, and then I ask myself
if one guy Z is so tough why they did not kill me as soon as I appeared on their radar, and why make complicated schemes to rule the world, if you can conque them all.

I apoliogize for not being more clear, but here is an example. Take F2, one platoon of the Enclave could have wiped everybody out, their level of firepower was out of proportion to everybody but the Chosen One and only for a reason to keep a player happy. As a famous NPC used to say "what a fine damn coincedence " that the closer to the final showdown I was the better weapons was getting available.

So as you can see, I'm not disagreeing with you, but rather discussing a very complex problem that exist in many games.

What I prefer is to have a limited set of weapons, that unlock their potential as your skills grow. That 's what I really like in Prelude. Sure you can buy a greatsword in your first town, but can you wiled it. But I agree that besides unlocking moves I don't see a big difference in damage and chance to hit beween skill 20 and skill 50.

You like that hitpoints and damage don't change much based on advancing in the game

I like HPs staying the same as the only reason for them to go up is to provide a player with a chance to survive a bazooka hit and to accomadate for progressively tougher weapons. As for damage it should grow with your skill but in proportion to average HP value.

saying that Morrowind doesn't have exploration and Prelude does is wrong!

Oops, did I really say that. Well, I walked into this one myself. What I should have said is that Morrowind has the most amazing visuals, very creative landscapes, and ivery inventive city / dwelling styles. Well, so did Myst if you played this one at the peak of its glory. What I meant is that I like arriving to a city in Prelude talking to folks solving their problems if it fits my agenda, well, I like simply talking to them. I did not have that in Morrowind, but that's just my opinion. For the record, I enjoyed Morrowind a lot, I played it through with 2 different chars, but it's the skills system ( Daggerfall had way more skills by the way ) and emptyness that got to me. Why did they have to max skills at a 100 having so few of them, I would never understand. Anyway, we were talking about 2 different things here, I should have been more specific.

It was an interactive book with very little roleplaying involved at all

But it was a hell of a book nonetheless. It's a shame you quit after you picked Fall-from-Grace. You missed more then a few great moments

One thing that Prelude nailed was the economic system

Could not agree more. Right on, Zero-Sum. Perfect hit

Well, crpgnut, after a treat that was your battle scene, the least I can do is give you a taste of one of mine, but I'll keep your settings. 20 40-hp bandits in the woods, party of 6, 3 fighters, archer, thaumaturgist, and a charred one (by the name of Ignus ) The fighters form a line, the thaumaturgist (T-bone for shiort) charges the daggers, the archer cripple-shots the leader, Ignus casts a doom balll dealing 7-18 damage to 4 bandits. They charge forward. 2 fightersr with 2h sword steps forward, archer makes 2 shots, wounded 2 more for 8 and 17 (critical), T-bone throws 4 daggers: 1 absorbed, 3 dealing 8-14 damage. Good ol' Ignus blasts again with similar results. Bandits charge again and now reached the front fighters surrounding the 2 who stepped forward. By now 15 bandits are wounded, 4 in good health, the crippled leader is half-way behind.
2 front fighters 'spin' reducing the health of surrounding them 8 fighters to 5-10, T-bone takes care about 4 of them, archer picks another 3, the last fighter gets the last one. Ignus blasts another ball trying not to hit the fighters, but misses and hit only the leader for 12. Half of the first ( well the only wave ) is out. The remaing 12 are _really_ pissed off now. 8 start bringing the fighters health down, 4 charge at Ignus. By the start of the next round, 1 tank is almost empty on health, 1 at 50%, Ignus is 25%. Ignus casts Flame Fountain for 14 damage, getting hit a couple times and passes out. The archer and T-bone are enjoying the lack of attention, and concentrating their fire kill 2, figthers kill 1 and wounded 6 more with spin attacks, but 1 fighter is out, 1 almost dead, 1 at 80%.
Next round. 4 bandits charge at T-bone, he kills 1, but took a couple of good hits. The archer kills another 1. The remaing fighters kill 2 more, but there is only 1 left at 50% health. Next round. T-bone misses twice, never gets another chance having the shit kicked out of him. The archer kills 1. The fighter kills 1but almost dead, 3 wounded badits left including the leader. The fighter delivers a stunning blow severing the leader's head, only to fall next to him. The archer kills another one, runs out of arrows, grabs a dagger
and hits rapidly like she's some kinda Navy Seal or something. The bandits hits twice, but the armour hold. The archer finish him off with a wicked hit. The party members stop faking death, and start bandaging, fixing armor dents, etc. Ignus wishes again for an uber-spell that kills people when he looks at them

Sorry for misspelling, typos, etc.

 

[thathmew]

It was really tough to balance the game for different power levels and play styles particularly for the endgame, for the next version I am implementing a better scaling system into some random and endgame encounters so that they should provide a challenge regardless of the "level" of the party encountering them. I plan on using this in moderation, but I think that should help a lot.
I probably will give the Flame spells another tweak upwards, although I personally find a flame user very useful throughout the game.
I would like skills to evolve a little more as they progress like combat options, its more fun if things actually change or give new options rather than just getting more powerful, but I don't know how much at this point I can do on that.
Barter improvement rates are going to be upped in the next version.
As CP said there's definitely the possibility more and more varied random encounters will also be added in addition to more scaled encounters.
'sall,
-mat

 

[Saint_Proverbius]

crpgnut,

Have you fought Glade Invaders yet? Or Dweller Fighters with a Dweller Leader around? If you're talking about difficulty, I'm on normal and I had trouble with those encounters. In fact, the Glade Invaders wiped out my party twice last night.

As for seeing skills improve. My guardian is now wielding a long sword in one hand an a short sword in the other, making him much more effective overall. My dagger wielding thurm is now holding her own in combat and getting criticals now.

 

[Kyminara]

I can't believe what I've been reading in this thread. This game was praised many times in this forum for being more realistic, and for not being a game a game (like almost every recent game available) where the characters spend most of thier time fighting monsters for stupid reasons. Now it is being criticized for the same things?

Characters in this game are not adventurers. They're not epic heroes. They are normal people, who do some extraordinary things. I think would be rediculous and completely against the feel of the game if when you are only half way through the game, your characters have kill-in-one-shot area effect spells, and are killing groups of 25 or more bandits everywhere they go. (Half the people in the valley have turned into bandits!) Yes, cprgnut, you're only half way through the story, and you haven't seen/gotten the best stuff yet. I can understand why you would be bored, if you've spent all this time only on increasing skills with no other purpose than to have high skills.

I don't think the characters need more ways of making money using thier skills. I finished the game with some decent equipment and I spent no time at all "raising money" by killing bandits. The occasional playing music at a tavern, pickpocketing rich fools, and generous gifts from quests was enough. (although, with a music of 40, I probably should have been making more money at the taverns each night.)

Flame magic is Not useless. Fireball and Aura of Flame are both powerful spells. I think Flame Finger might be bugged though, because there were several battles, where it did Nothing. There wasn't even a message that said if I missed.

Why would people in this game increase Hit points? Really. What magical force allows them to litterally take more wounds just because they know more stuff? Higher ombat skills allow you allow you to hit more often and avoid (parry) opponnents hits more often. Since hit points never increase, even a slight increase in damage (like from a flaming weapon) is a good benefit.

This game has many great things to explore in the cities and the people the live there. I agree that it would be nice if there were some random spots in the wilderness where you could encounter something interesting, but definately not dungeons or "bandit camps". It would only distract from the real story, which is happening in the city.

Please do Not increase the rate of random encounters. We don't want to see more of the Cranky Thaumaturgist, we only want more different things. There needs to be medium level encounters somewhere between a few peningers and a few major possessed.

1. Originally there were meant to be a passive skill bonus once the player reached a certain skill level. For lack of time, we decided to implement those only for combat (i.e. when you reach 40 in sword you can spin). For example, when you reached 40 in Tinker you could build a clockwork man to fight for you. When you reached 40 lit/lore you could write a novel. When you reached 40 barter you could open a shop. Etc, etc.

Setting up a shop seems like it would add too many complications. (How do we run a shop in Lands End while exploring sewers in the Citadel?) Another idea could be to let characters try to "swindle" shop keepers. If they succeed, the price cuts in half, but if they fail the price doubles. In any case, I would be nice to be more special abilities associated with have high skills.

just my thoughts

 

[crpgnut]

Kyminara, I am following the storyline completely, no sidetracking. There is no reason built in the game to go exploring. I don't camp and fight at all. Like you, I'm following the storyline, such as it is. As far as combat goes, understand that even though my Flame mage has a skill of 50, he hasn't been given fireball. Prelude doesn't reward a player based on how he trains, but on how far he's followed the rigid storyline. Unfortunately,
even though I have the skills to have earned fireball, I haven't talked to townperson X yet to be givin this spell. This is where the game is losing me. I don't want to be led down a specific path to reach my rewards. Linearity is the bane of a crpg. Linearity belongs in the world of adventure games. As far as your money comment, I'm not sure what you read. I love the economic system. I said as much. Consider this: my character skill is gun.
I've been given a .22 pistol and told that if I practice I'll get better weapons. I practice diligently and can now hit a human target at will. My .22 is no longer doing anything for me, so I train up to 9mm. I still have the skill gun, but now I'm doing way more damage.
Did I change? No, my skill and weapon choice just increased. Same with magic in the game.

 

[Boogie With Stu]

Yes, but where do you get that 9mm gun? Does it magically appear in your holster when you have practiced enough with your .22, or should you have to find someone who would sell you the gun? Although I am still in the first town and I don't know how you get the fireball spell, I would much rather have to find someone to teach me the spell then just have it "appear" in my spellbook. Is this how you get all the spells in PTD? If so, I like it. Just my 2 cents.

 

[Vault Dweller]

I've been given a .22 pistol and told that if I practice I'll get better weapons. I practice diligently and can now hit a human target at will. My .22 is no longer doing anything for me, so I train up to 9mm. I still have the skill gun, but now I'm doing way more damage.
Did I change? No, my skill and weapon choice just increased. Same with magic in the game.

Well you start with .22, then 9mm, ....soon end up with magnum or desert eagle or gauss pistol but all the weapons are available to you right of the start except for the gauss pistol of course ( assuming you can buy weapons ). The only reason why you don't start with a magnum is because you are much better off with a more manageble gun. But as your skill grow you would be able to use a good gun more effectively being 10 times more deadly with a gun you could have right from the start. Same with sword skill, you can use a claymore, but very clamsily, so you better grab a shortsword and practice till you are reay. But once you are ready you don't need to travel half-the world to acquire the ultimate weapon, it's right here under you nose waiting for you.

As for magic in the game, it's hard to comment 'cause I did not play Ignus the Flameboy, but it makes sense to me that you need to find a trainer rather then wake up on day and say 'wow, looks like my skills have increased. Let's see what I can do now" As for the damage, the Zero-Sum folks said they are going to tweak it, so hang in there.

About linearity, it is indeed the bane of crpg and belongs to adventue games. Only I don't think that Prelude is suffering from that. It's just realistic, that's all. If you are a mage you should not expect to bump into mage trainers on every corner. But I realize that it's a game and since you chose to play a fire mage your choice should be supported. If you travel to the Monastery, although it's could be challenging combat-vise, but then again is not that what you are looking for? Anyway, if you make it there, you shall find a trainer and a cool npc mage with good stats and a full set of spells ( assuming you pass him a message from his dad ) if that's not too much linearity for you

 

[Saint_Proverbius]

Kyminara, I am following the storyline completely, no sidetracking. There is no reason built in the game to go exploring. I don't camp and fight at all. Like you, I'm following the storyline, such as it is. As far as combat goes, understand that even though my Flame mage has a skill of 50, he hasn't been given fireball. Prelude doesn't reward a player based on how he trains, but on how far he's followed the rigid storyline.

I disagree. So what if all you have is Flame Finger. The higher the skill you have, the meaner that spell is. In fact, you can see exactly what skill does for these spells by checking here:

http://www.rpgcodex.com/content.php?id=14

and

http://www.rpgcodex.com/content.php?id=23

As you can see, it may be the same spell and it may have the same graphics, but they do get more powerful.

 

[ReKoT]

Owning a shop could be great fun..
Maybe i could rent a stall in the barrier market place and employ someone to look after it for me when i am out adventuring, when i return every so often i may have new items that people have sold or i might want to restock my supplies with items bandits have so helpfully supplied
This idea could be developed much further..

 

[Trash]

Well since you'd asked for a few pointers for later on in the game...
How about a couple of new high level randomn encounters like:

Abandoned evil shrine: you find an old shrine that just gives you the creeps. You have the chance to bring an offering (increasing a stat and lowering another stat or your rep)
Alternatively you can try to destroy the shrine....if you do this there is a chance you'd have to fight a demon.

Witches hut: You encounter a shack in the middle of nowhere. There is an old lady inside. After speaking with her you might find that she is a witch. When you confront her with this she either agrees to sell you stuff at a discount or she attacks (depending on your char, will or int)

You find a bandit's hideout. After plenty of combat you find that the bandits had a rather scruffy looking prisoner. If you free this person he thanks you profoundly and then turns into a monster and attacks....he was one of the bandits that became possesed. This is one for the hackers and slashers amongst us. :wink:

You stumble upon a campfire. There are signs of a struggle and some tracks....follow these (high enough nature skill) and you encounter some remains. If you're perception is high enough you'll notice that these corpses are very fresh. Leave immediately after this or you'll be fighting a rather powerfull group of glade invaders.

You find an old man sitting in the woods. If your char is high enough he'll offer you a chance to gain a lot off skill points. For this you'll however have to sign a paper with your blood. Say no and he leaves forever. If you're int, char and speech are high enough you can ask him more about the contract and finally persuade him to give you the skill points without signing. (great chance to implement a funny theological debate) If you piss him off however he turns into a demon or something similar nasty and attacks you.

Can't think of any others at the moment.
Cya,

Trash