Preview Depth of Peril preview

[Vault Dweller]

Tags: Depths of Peril

<p>I had an opportunity to play <a href="http://www.soldak.com/content/blogcategory/17/30"></a>Depth of Peril (alfa version) this week:</p>
<blockquote>Here is the basic overview: you go and fight monsters, gaining loot and experience in randomly generated areas. Now, here's the twist, you are not the only hero in this land of the brave. Other heroes, representing local factions called covenants, do the same "hero" thing - fight monsters, gaining loot and experience. Unfortunately, the town seems to be too small for all of you, and as C. McLeod once said "There can be only one!", so it's either you or them. You can use basic diplomacy to keep someone off your back for a while and/or make offensive/defensive alliances. The game is over when your covenant's lifestone is destroyed or when you destroy other covenants' lifestones. Naturally, the lifestones are well protected by hired monsters, NPCs, and heroes, so attacking a lifestones is like attacking an enemy base in an RTS game: come prepared and expect a lot of resistance and casualties. <a href="http://www.rpgcodex.com/content.php?id=151">Let's take a closer look now:</a></blockquote>

 

[Dhruin]

I got quite hooked on this. Yes, I know it's a hack'n'slasher but dropping the crappy story in [insert Diablo clone] for something more dynamic and replayable really worked for me. It's no substitute for a (good) CRPG but it makes a nice time waster.

 

[thesheeep]

Seems promising indeed.

 

[Hümmelgümpf]

let's role-play and pretend that Sexy is a lesbian.

Where did you get that idea? On uesp.net?

 

[thesheeep]

Nono. Every woman with a sword (or another weapon) in her hand has to be a lesbian, since the role behaviour of a non-lesbian-woman forbids the use of weapons (other than kitchen knives).

Where have you been in the last two centuries? pff..

 

[Shoelip]

I've never seen this before but it actually looks kinda cool, and it even has reletively nice graphics to boot! Definitely want to try this out.

 

[speeler]

I think VD would really like the Sisterhood of Fate covenant that is in the game. They only recruit women.

 

[Kraszu]

So if somebody in town dies it also make other heroes dmg like you, no?

I through (when I first read about the game) that each hero would have his own small village that way he would only dmg himself if he let some evil monsters to kill npc (npc could give better prices to his hero then to others) it would also make more sense if village could progress depending on your action then.

 

[Antagonist]

Good preview overall and a candidate for purchase since I'm desperately looking for good games to play during the summer. Hopefully the indy scene will be covered in more detail in the future. As interesting as the ongoing rape of the Fallout franchise may be I'd rather read about games which I might buy and not the ones I won't touch with a ten-foot pole.

 

[speeler]

So if somebody in town dies it also make other heroes dmg like you, no?

I through (when I first read about the game) that each hero would have his own small village that way he would only dmg himself if he let some evil monsters to kill npc (npc could give better prices to his hero then to others) it would also make more sense if village could progress depending on your action then.

Currently, losing town NPCs will hurt you more, but it will still hurt the other covenants some. For example, if the beastmaster is killed, then no one can buy new guards until she eventually resurrects.

Each covenant has their own recruits, but the town itself is shared by all of the covenants.

 

[Jaime Lannister]

Diablo II clones have imo failed to replicate the two subtleties that made Diablo II good instead of mediocre to terrible like its clones. One was skill trees. The trees were incredibly deep and there were hundreds of variations for each class. The prerequisite system where you can put one point into a prerequisite and 20 into the skill it unlocks is part of Diablo II's subtle genius. Also, the combat is never passive. There is always some shaman, some boss, some camp of 1000 creatures that you have to worry about, rather than repeatedly clicking on the same mob, in the same 2-3 zombie group you've killed a hundred times. *cough* Silverfall *cough*

Anyway, the diplomacy and stuff looks good, but how's the hack-and-slash? To me, Diablo II is the only game that managed to make hack-and-slash interesting.

 

[speeler]

Diablo II clones have imo failed to replicate the two subtleties that made Diablo II good instead of mediocre to terrible like its clones. One was skill trees. The trees were incredibly deep and there were hundreds of variations for each class. The prerequisite system where you can put one point into a prerequisite and 20 into the skill it unlocks is part of Diablo II's subtle genius.

Well first we aren't trying to be a clone like most other action RPGs. We are trying to make a game that is actually unique and has another layer of gameplay. However, I think we do well on your 2 points.

As for our skills, we are pretty similar to Diablo 2. Each class has 30 skills available which will hopefully allow lots of variations. From what I have seen, all of our testers have different builds so this seems to be true. We did get rid of the tree part though. All of our skills are in theory available at the beginning of the game but each skill has a starting cost and the cost goes up by one for each skill level.

Ultimately this ends up similar to Diablo's tree system. There is no arbitrary level that new skills kick in but you still have to save up points to get to the "higher level" skills. However, you never need to waste any points on prerequisite skills and "lower level" skills can be very useful also because their starting cost is less so they need less points to level up.

Also, the combat is never passive. There is always some shaman, some boss, some camp of 1000 creatures that you have to worry about, rather than repeatedly clicking on the same mob, in the same 2-3 zombie group you've killed a hundred times. *cough* Silverfall *cough*

You will rarely find the same group of monsters in Depths of Peri and I'm pretty sure you will never keep running into small groups of zombies over and over again

First, we vary the monsters too much for this to really happen. So you really shouldn't see the same groups much.

Second, we will occasionally spawn in harder versions of the monster. These can be champions, elites, uniques, or legends. Champions and elites have some random enchantments so their strength can vary a lot. Uniques and legends are named mini-bosses basically and have some set enchantments (unique to that particular monster of course). Even without their enchantments, all of these versions have more health, armor, defense, and do more damage than their normal counterpart.

Third, we have a lot of monsters that work differently then just simple melee. Here's just a few examples: liches can raise the dead, there are at least a couple monsters that can spawn other monsters, scavengers can eat the dead to become more powerful, some monsters can call for help, male imps get pissy if you attack the females, and many others, but I don't want to give too much away.

Fourth, it is not just you against the world. The other covenants run around in the world and will fight against the monsters also. Be careful if you are at war with them though, because they can attack you also. There are also many other NPCs that can be adventuring around and will fight for or against you (potential recruits, wandering vendors, people that need to be rescued, renegade barbarians, etc.). Monsters even fight against each other many times. In the time that the game takes place, many of the monster races are at war with each other so they will gladly kill each other if these races find each other.

Ok, I've rambled on long enough

 

[Jaime Lannister]

Thanks for the incredibly detailed reply. This game sounds great, can't wait to play.

 

[yns88]

lol, first post

This game certainly seems promising, and definitely has my interest right now (enough to make me register for the forums to make comment, at least).

I particularly like the focus on trying to freshen the action elements to make the hack-and-slash gameplay an enjoyable experience, since the descriptions in this preview make me think that it would be comparable to Diablo, the very peak of the genre (On a side note, I've tried Dungeon Siege, and the gameplay was just so tedious that it reminded me of an MMORPG, except without any social factor).

What disappointed me, however, was the preview's almost complete foregoing of any discussion of plot. Sure, the Diablo games may not have had plotlines nearly comparable to certain CRPGs that focus on player choice, but they at least had a fairly strong back story that made the player feel immersed in an actual world, and not just "generic landscape+dungeon combo #4" (which I actually did feel in Dungeon Siege...is it just me, or did that game suck?). Now, I know this defeats the purpose of the "randomly generated world" idea, but it's very important to me that my rivals have fleshed out motives, rather than just statistic-based responses such as "if you pay me X gold, I'll help you fight Y covenant."

The original Diablo incorporated this with random generation to a (rather small) degree with the random selection of minor quests when you play the game, and I think it would be interesting if this idea was furthered to things like randomly-triggered scripted events to spice up the gameplay (and give further insight into the back story of the world). Then again, this game's ability for monsters to raid the town seems like a pretty cool step in this direction.

Man, now I feel like I'm just trying to force my opinions on game design onto you...I should probably stop this post before it gets any worse.

[EDIT] I now see that there are some story-thick quests (a la Turen), but my concern still stands over whether the covenants will hold equal depth, and whether there will be any unifying factor between the quests in the plotline. On a completely unrelated note, if all the covenants were played by real people, that would sound like an MMORPG I would actually be interested in buying. [/EDIT]

 

[Vault Dweller]

Re: lol, first post

What disappointed me, however, was the preview's almost complete foregoing of any discussion of plot.

All I've seen during a week of playtime are random quests, which isn't necessarily a bad thing. Anyway, what Steven mentioned and explained in emails paints a pretty good background picture, but I'm not sure in what form it would manifest itself in the final build.

 

[speeler]

Re: lol, first post

What disappointed me, however, was the preview's almost complete foregoing of any discussion of plot. Sure, the Diablo games may not have had plotlines nearly comparable to certain CRPGs that focus on player choice, but they at least had a fairly strong back story that made the player feel immersed in an actual world, and not just "generic landscape+dungeon combo #4" (which I actually did feel in Dungeon Siege...is it just me, or did that game suck?).

Yeah, that wasn't VDs fault. The preview build only had 1 story related quest in it and that one had terrible temporary text. We now have the storyline quests in the game, so you can actually play through the current events of the world. The first few quests do revolve around Turen.

Background story wise, we have way more than Diablo or probably any other action RPG since you can read about tons of the history of Aleria in the short stories. Many of these are already posted on our website btw.

 

[yns88]

Yeah, I just took a look at the website earlier and found that my worries were pretty much groundless. Looks like an excellent game you're making there, keep up the good work.