Vapourware Seven Dragon Saga - Gold Box spiritual successor from SSI veterans

[Dorateen]

Crossed over $100 K so at least they made it into six digit territory. I imagine that was important for showing any potential investors, or another financial options TSI might explore. I think Klein mentioned some regional publishers taking an interest.

Anyway, they are using kickstarter as a platform to get out more details, I don't see them shutting it down any time soon.

 

[Infinitron]

https://www.kickstarter.com/project...y-tactical-simulations-interact/posts/1172943

David Shelley, details on Goals

Youth choices

During character creation, the game asks three questions about personal motivation, and then asks the player to select a final Goal. Goals are part of the character advancement, but also method to give each character a bit more personality than a pool of abilities. Even a poorly chosen goal will not cripple a character, so the choice shouldn't be high stakes.

The first question derives from the Race of the character, asking about her youth. The second comes from the Class selected, and the third from the Specialty. Together they provide an abbreviated background for that character.

We have over a dozen Goals charted out, but expect to tweak this as we layout the different quests. Our plan is for players to get equal opportunities to choose each Goal, and that no Goal gets allied only to ‘positive’ or ‘negative’ solutions to quests.

So at creation, the player must decide how he will apportion the Goals. Will she strive to match all the characters’ Goal as closely as possible? If so, then when she reaches a solution to a quest that matches, all the characters benefit. But the long term consequences might not be what the player wishes. Also no quest has possible solutions which match every Goal, So a narrow selection of Goal removes the possibility of rewards in the majority of quests.

Let’s take a look at the two Goals in the image above: Seeker and Serenity. How might they come up and into conflict in resolving a quest? The player’s ultimate goal is securing the Dragonsteel mines and clearing a path for its long term export to the empire. The party comes upon a village in a well situated vale, overlooked by a lord’s castle. The vale appears clear of dangerous monsters, and the road in decent shape.

The town has befriended a Fire Wyrm; a tough, non-flying dragonkin, all scales and smoke, and used it to drive off monstrous threats. They have also used it to keep the lord’s tax collectors at bay, and they have no interest in obeying a distant emperor. The lord has enough troops to threaten any unilateral deal the party could make with the villagers. The castle has been a repository of old books for some time, and the lord would be happy to share its knowledge with the party, if his tax problem were solved. Possible solutions.

• Assault the village, slay the Wyrm. Resulting in the villagers no longer being a problem, but the lord’s tax base destroyed. Intimidate or eliminate the lord, and access the library. The player satisfied the Seeker Goal (and probably some others). The vale is now vulnerable to monsters, bandits, etc. Villagers and nobles in the surrounding area are not going to be friendly.
• Lure the Wyrm away from the village and slay it. The lord can reestablish the old status quo, and reward the party. The vale is less protected, the villagers are probably unhappy and a few get strung up. The player gets the Seeker Goal Nobles in the region are friendlier, villagers less so.
• Set up a threat forcing both the villagers and the troops to join forces (lure something in). Use a bit of diplomacy to bridge the gap. The lord underestimates the party’s benefits and does not choose to reward them, but agrees to help secure the vale for the empire’s route. The player gets the Serenity goal, for minimizing the disruption to the locals.
• Set the Fire Wyrm onto the castle, slay the noble. Library burns. Villagers agree to protection of the empire, lest local nobles come for vengeance. The player satisfies neither goal. However, this option could still satisfy the Goal of another character. So some Goals can be complementary, while others will commonly conflict. For instance, Thrill of Battle and Serenity are going to be uncommon bedfellows.

final choice of Goal

In the above example, we note the following: how the player enjoys playing, how the choices affect long term elements of the world, and the individual character goals all jostle for priority. Is the player most interested in random mayhem, consequences be damned, in optimizing the rewards to his characters? Or is the player interested in diplomatically shaping the world to achieve the edict from the emperor. These many opportunities to explore and experiment, should provide plenty of fun.

 

[Zombra]

Excel file up with all Specialty, Race, and Class descriptions from the updates, plus the Goals that have been mentioned so far although that list is not final.

You can use the file to easily tweak your party concept and your list will populate to all pages. Manually enter classes on the Class page, and so forth.

Zed

 

[Zombra]

As for the update, that quest resolution diversity sounds amazing. No idea whether quests will generally be that robust, but if they pull it off ... man. Super cool to see the Goal system driving this level of scripting complexity.

 

[Zed]

Excel file up with all Specialty, Race, and Class descriptions from the updates, plus the Goals that have been mentioned so far although that list is not final.

You can use the file to easily tweak your party concept and your list will populate to all pages. Manually enter classes on the Class page, and so forth.

Zed

This stuff looks solid to me.
Too bad about their poor KS launch.

 

[ArchAngel]

This is good on paper but just like in D:OS players will just use it as another leveling mechanic and always choose what gives them wanted mechanical benefits instead of roleplaying. Better to keep roleplaying outside of rewards system similar to how PoE plans to do.

 

[prodigydancer]

This is good on paper but just like in D:OS players will just use it as another leveling mechanic and always choose what gives them wanted mechanical benefits instead of roleplaying. Better to keep roleplaying outside of rewards system similar to how PoE plans to do.

Yeah, I remember picking lines in D:OS conversations based on how they will affect the character's traits.

 

[SausageInYourFace]

So deliberately basing your own play style on purely mechanical considerations rather than actual role-play considerations is now suddenly a games fault instead of your owns? Wat.

 

[V_K]

I don't see what's the problem here. It's not like in DOS where different traits provide different benefits - from what I remember in SDS playing true to your goals only provides you with additional level-up points and the way you spend them is up to you. So minmaxing and role-playing don't really contradict each other: you create a greedy bastard, roleplay him as a greedy bastard and reap the benefits from being a true greedy bastard.

 

[GlutenBurger]

This is good on paper but just like in D:OS players will just use it as another leveling mechanic and always choose what gives them wanted mechanical benefits instead of roleplaying. Better to keep roleplaying outside of rewards system similar to how PoE plans to do.

The term has been applied so broadly that it has started to lose meaning, but I'm pretty sure roleplaying in a CRPG outside of what the mechanics require is what has long been derided here as LARPing.

I think it sounds like a nice alternative to an alignment system.

 

[prodigydancer]

So deliberately basing your own play style on purely mechanical considerations rather than actual role-play considerations is now suddenly a games fault instead of your owns? Wat.

Lazy fail design where RP isn't separated from mechanics is definitely the game's fault and not mine. But D:OS had worse shortcomings so this one is relatively insignificant.

 

[Zombra]

This is good on paper but just like in D:OS players will just use it as another leveling mechanic and always choose what gives them wanted mechanical benefits instead of roleplaying. Better to keep roleplaying outside of rewards system similar to how PoE plans to do.

"Always", huh? We'll see about that.

 

[ArchAngel]

So deliberately basing your own play style on purely mechanical considerations rather than actual role-play considerations is now suddenly a games fault instead of your owns? Wat.

Yes and no. But most players will just care about mechanics. And then go to next games being used to the worse system.

 

[DeepOcean]

Hmmm, I liked thier village raid scenario, nice choices in there and with some consequence but that should be on the pitch and on the main page and not when there are only 20 days left for their campaign, it is frustrating when developers have the right mind set but fail for stupid things like failing on communicating, on creating the impression they are lazy like they are doing. Man, it's 2014, two years of kickstarter and they are making mistakes Obsidian made on 2012 but they don't have the reputation of Obsidian to save them up.

Anyway, I think they are being over ambitious with this game and even 450.000 is nowhere enough to make an isometric rpg with tons of choices and consequences like that. They should have started with some smaller and less ambitious game like a Knights of Chalice clone, a Serpent in the Staglands something like... "guys, this is a game where you are going to kill shit and not much else but killing shit is fun on challenging isometric TB battles" and fuck God... some concept art with their final art style would look nice, the 3d prototype was generic as it can be.

 

[CyberWhale]

Good 2d is great.
Good 3d is great.

The problem in the games industry isn't graphical dimensions, it's style and vision. I long for game developers to commission real artists. Real musicians too.

If only Westwood Studios could make a comeback.

THAT would be the single greatest thing EVAR.

Pyro Studios and Spellbound Entertainment also had some really top-notch 2D artists.

 

[Zombra]

So deliberately basing your own play style on purely mechanical considerations rather than actual role-play considerations is now suddenly a games fault instead of your owns? Wat.

Yes and no. But most players will just care about mechanics. And then go to next games being used to the worse system.

Don't hide behind some mythical "most players". If you want to play like a munchkin, own up and criticize the design on that basis.

Even if "most players" do prefer to min/max, who cares? Munchkins gonna munch, and the role-play elements aren't going to matter to them anyway - in their eyes it'll just be a neat new system to metagame.

 

[buzz]

Pyro Studios and Spellbound Entertainment also had some really top-notch 2D artists.

That was technically pre-rendered 3D but still, some really great shit.

 

[hemtae]

https://www.kickstarter.com/project...y-tactical-simulations-interact/posts/1173839

The Action System

In case you haven’t already, we invite you to sign up for the TSI newsletter on our website to learn more about the team’s history at SSI and receive all the latest information about Seven Dragon Saga: http://www.tsi-games.com/


--

Paul Murray on how actions work in combat
A lot of combat in games involves what you allow the characters to do each turn. There are various ways to restrict this: from the simple, “one move, one attack”, to the action points systems where everything has a cost. In Seven Dragon Saga we chose a flexible middle ground. One move, one attack, provides minimal choice for the player, while an action point system tends to favor a more static battle -- most players choose to use points to attack as often as possible, sacrificing movement.

Each turn, the character has three actions of differing size: Unique (most attacks), Standard (most movements), and Minor (quick spells and abilities). The player may substitute a smaller action for a bigger one, so a Turn could consist of two Standards and a Minor, or three Minors.

So how’s this work in detail? Spellcasting is limited to one spell per turn, so one could cast a buff spell (Standard), draw a weapon (Minor) and attack with it (Unique). Or a meleer could gut an enemy in front of him (Unique), move up to the next enemy (Standard), and mark it with a Leadership debuff (Minor). A Shadowmaster character could turn invisible (Minor), shoot an opponent with surprise (Unique) and return to invisibility (Minor).

Movements come in two forms: conventional, Running, Evasion and Mystic Leap, which use Standard actions; and fast, Flash Step and Teleport, which use Minor actions. Each provides its own tactical advantages and disadvantages. Using Flash Step, a character could move out from cover, shoot, and move back into cover in the same turn. Evasion and Leap take up the Standard action, but avoid any Opportunity Attacks. Running is the overall fastest movement.

In addition, there are limited use abilities which provide extra actions. Adrenaline gives an additional Unique, and that always desirable extra attack or spell. Mobility provides an added Standard, for more movement, or just another useful action. Quickness nets an extra Minor action.

All of this provides the player great tactical choice, while giving the game strong control over damage per turn from players and enemies. Maintaining this balance allows us to design interesting battles with an expectation of their overall duration and challenge. No one wants a fight that is both a foregone conclusion and drags things out.

--

Community collaboration and feedback are important to our work. Please interact with us on our website and on social media:

https://www.facebook.com/TSIGames

https://twitter.com/TSIGames

 

[Zombra]

God damn. I'm probably biased at this point, but this thing sounds better and better with every update.

Still praying without much hope for that Kickstarter miracle

 

[SausageInYourFace]

God damn. I'm probably biased at this point, but this thing sounds better and better with every update.

Still praying without much hope for that Kickstarter miracle

I feel ya, already upped my pledge once, thinking about doing it a third time at this point.

Two small things about the last update:

- draw a weapon (minor)
Interesting, so you gotta draw a weapon first before you can use it?

- Shadowmaster
Whats that, I don't remember a mention of that class before this update?

 

[FuriousGamer87]

I am loving their updates so far. Already pledged by the previous update though.

 

[stony3k]

God damn. I'm probably biased at this point, but this thing sounds better and better with every update.

Still praying without much hope for that Kickstarter miracle

They should fire whoever they hired to help market their Kickstarter

 

[Zombra]

- Shadowmaster
Whats that, I don't remember a mention of that class before this update?

That's not a class; it's a Scout ability, I believe. Lets 'em turn invisible.

 

[Transfiguring Roar]

They should fire whoever they hired to help market their Kickstarter

I feel the same, having had high hopes for it. Seems like they didn't even hire someone. Based off this comment from the previous update, it sounds like they were hard at work the whole time instead of preparing the kickstarter:

When you're down in the trenches with something for many months, sometimes its hard to identify what parts really resonate with other people. I'm finding the doing a KS is a lot like releasing a game -- you want to playtest it, do a limited beta, and then go to production.

 

[stony3k]

Hopefully they learn from this and come back with more details and a better KS.