I think it should include: (I know some of these have already been mentioned as I read them but I wrote my ideas before I read the and I'd just like to reinforce them to show that more than one person would like them included.)
- Enhance the graphics: make everything a bit bigger, and also for higher resolutions. I have a 1680 x 1050 and using a full screen is too distorted and windowed (which I use) is really small.
- Every chest should have pre-chosen items and not randomly picked. As soon as I discovered they were random I would save and restore dozens of times until I found something I really liked. I know it's kind of lame to do that, but it helped me get that Adamantine Full Helm that I needed!
. Anyway, yes, they really should be ordained.- A absolutely massive land, with each subsection larger too. One thing I love about EB I is how vast the land is. I think if it it was quadrupled or octupled or more (I know it'd be a ton of work) it would be really awesome.
- Larger cities, but also, an absolutely colossal capital city, like a full subsection of the land. In there there would be competing blacksmiths, many schools and academies, &c.
- More books and the possibility of finding books in all the bookshelves. It sort of annoyed me that I could click on all the bookshelves but I had to find all the books for gaining skill levels from chests and people selling them. Also, I can find for example the "Light Armor Field Guide" but how about a "Light Armor Field Guide II" or "The Lumberjack II", &c.
- A change in the magic system. I like how a higher spell level requires a higher skill, but the problem is mana cost. I can make just as much damage with 6 Fire Darts on Level 1 as 1 Fire Dart on Level 6 and they use the same amount of mana. But, I had to get all those skill levels to get to level six! And drains my mana like crazy. The only advantage is killing your enemies quicker. I think with higher skill levels it should cost less, so at an an Elemental Skill of 11 the Fire Dart Lvl 6 costs 12 Mana, but if I get all the way to an Elemental Skill of 15 or something else then the Fire Dart Lvl 6 should only cost 8 or something. Hey, when you're more skilled, isn't it easier? Also, there shouldn't be a limit on levels, we should be able to increase levels as we continue increasing in skill
More skillful mage, more powerful magic he produce.- More enemies to give you more experience. There doesn't necessarily need to be a creation of entire new units but rather create a goblin with more hitpoints, more attack, more experience when killed, and call him an elite goblin or orc or hobgoblin or something else. Or perhaps make him a big bigger or something
. - More races. It would really be cool to see and interact and buy and learn from the Dwarves we hear that make these magnificent doors that cannot be picked or the elves, &c.
- Continue playing after the story-line quest is over. Hey, I got all those piles of gold after killing Gramuk (or giving him the Crux) can't I go out and spend it? And continue playing and finishing the other quests? I never could find those darn mercenaries that were east of Blackwater that had the Divine Ore Gunther wanted.
- Automatic erase of missions that are obsolete and ability to go back through them. I passed through Whistling Cave and killed everything in there before I found Lilith. She asked me for the Stinger which was in Whistling Cave so I decided to wait a bit and look for it later. I got to Blackwater, found the bloodstained note, got into the repository, and got the crux. After that I didn't need Lilith anymore so I killed her for the guy in the bar and gave him the Amulet Passkey for 16 (I think, not sure). Two things I'd liked changed-- firstly, I would have given my Adamantine Great Sword to say Foozgrumph to the bar keeper again to get back into the secret room to see what was in Lilith's Security box. And two, after I killed her, I really would have liked the mission to kill the Queen drone to disappear since I couldn't complete it anymore, but oh well.
- This isn't really needed but I found it humorous anyway. It took me quite a while to find out how to get into the upper levels of Shadowmirk and so I had explored all of Thaermore, killed everything I could before I figured it out. Gone to the Goblin Citadel, killed everybody there, &c, so finally when the Giants came to help me kill "huge goblin army", there were just walking around with nothing to do
.- Add horses and dragons and possibly other mythological beasts. It would be really nice to have a horse to ride, and of course there would be many breeds of horses: some stronger, others faster, others helping in attack, &c. Your horse would need to be taken care of, feed, bought supplies for at a stable (in a town) where he would be bought, and you would learn to ride (because now horse riding would be a skill too), &c. After lots of skill you might be able to buy a dragon (for an enormous sum of money from a dragon master-- and you'd need to learn how to ride and handle on of them too before buying) and the dragon could fly you around (instead of quick travel-- which should be taken out), breath fire on your enemies, enhance your magical powers while riding them, and fight them melee too. Dragons would be in breeds too, each having their strengths and bonuses and weaknesses. About other mythological creatures, they would just be other enemies to fight and give you experience. Of course, a rogue dragon would become a very formidable enemy. And, just imagine if while on your travels (though the chance would be so ridiculously small), your encountered a rogue dragon that just before he killed you, he befriended you and he would teach you how to ride him and you could interact with him, &c.
- Allow our character to sleep in beds that aren't his, sleep next to campfires (like at bordertown) and do other things of that nature.
- Have legendary weapons and armor which cannot be created or bought but only gotten through quests. The first time I played Book I and I was getting the bow for Ooseleph, the tree dude, I was imagining a special green bow called "(The elven guy's name here)'s Great Bow" and it would be more powerful than any other bow, &c. I was very pleased to get a Recursive Compound Bow, but that just made it sound like a really good bow, it ought to have something more, something legendary and mystic that makes it different from all others.
- Longer gameplay and storyline. I completed all of Book I in 26 hours, (it may be a lot or a little) and by 23h I had complete Adamantine Heavy Armor and weapons, and everything. It would be harder to create a longer storyline, but if it took about 50h to get the first piece of armor or weapon of the highest/best possible and about 75h to get all, and the story-line took about 100h, that would really be very fun. But of course many more quests and levels and enemies and thousands of items would need to be created.
Now, here I have a complicated series of ideas, but in my opinion would completely make Eschalon the greatest game ever, (though it already is
.It hard to describe it in one sentence, but the best way is to say to make Eschalon a living, breathing world. Different every time you play it. It would be seriously hard to script, but would be awesome.
- Allow for the purchasing of property in a town and city. But more than that, if you were rich enough, to buy out a business and make money from that.
- Allow for the building of houses on our property in town, or anywhere on unclaimed property out in nowhere. Being able to build a house or a business or a storage place for our stuff would be awesome (but you would need at least one building skill to do this, and the more skill you had, the cheaper it would be). Just give us a choice of walls, (with hidden and secret ones), floors, doors, (almost like the Sims but simpler and less complicated), and items to put inside like chests, bed, and other items found around EB I. We could also make basements, &c. All of the items and building material would cost different amounts, like a simple oak door that a anyone with one picking lock skill could open at 50% would cost maybe a 100 Gold while a magnificent Dwarven door would be up at 10000 Gold.
- Make the AI smarter and more creative. Make thieves in towns that might try to rob you while you are just strolling along or your house while you are away. You could get a reward by the town guard for apprehending the thieves, &c. In fact, that could be another sub-quest, catching an infamous criminal and bring him back to be put in prison.
- Create more businesses and let them also compete and have different prices. More businesses, there could be stables, dragon-things, academies, universities, archery-ranges, clothing stores, book shops, supply stores, &c. One thing I didn't like was that all the prices were the same everywhere. They should be different in different places, for different items, so you have to learn where to buy your armor, or your swords, or that the Mercury is much cheaper in one town than in another. Also, a blacksmith in one town might tell you his iron longswords are 50 Gold less than some other guy, but you wouldn't really know until you went and found out, hey? Also, the inventories should stay the same except for when items are bought and sold. Also, the NPC should be allowed to buy and sell from eachother to make it more realistic, but of course they can't be too smart or too dumb.
- Let us collect our own resources. This could be taken to an really fun level. We could scour the country-side to collect certain reagents and reactants. We could buy a pick-axe from somewhere and slowly mine our way into a mountain side. In mining it would take a day to mine away one tile of mountain, and at the end you would get a nugget of copper, carbon (for making steel), iron, silver, lead, gold, mithril or a gem or a diamond or sulfur, &c. The deeper you dug, the more valuable things would become. (Though, they shouldn't be random, they can be random decided, at the beginning of the game, but if the same tile is mined, the same resource will always be there, but would change between games.)
- Create our own objects. These raw resources which I just mentioned could be sold or melted down into bars (for which you'd need blacksmithing skills) with with weapons could be made. The same thing would be with wood, and you could find a really nice wood deep in a forest which was excellent for making bows, and you could made a bow with it if you had the necessary skills. And all this would be taken further. The way a sword would be made: there would be a little box similar to the potion's mixing. The top box would be a drop down menu from with the type of weapon/armor would be made. We would select sword (just any random sword, but there would be many types of swords) and put the nugget of the metal in the left box and if we wanted to created a diamond edge we would put a diamond in the other, if not the just click the forge button and a day would pass and you would have a new nice shiny sword! The different types of weapons would depend on your skill as a blacksmith. It might be required to have a skill of 15 to forge a claymore and 20 for a great sword while only 5 for a kama, &c.
- Different levels of weapons and armor. There already is some distinction, but I think there should be a greater distinction. There would be four things to rank them, the actual weapon (short sword, kama, long sword, claymore, great sword, &c), the substances that they made of, the quality of the worksmanship and the embument (though not always a case). For example, swords could be made of copper, iron, steel, mithril, (many others), but the quality of their making would also factor into it. Like a master quality copper sword would give more damage than an inferior quality steel sword, though steel is better than copper, and likewise. The same would apply to armor, bows, as it does with alchemy currently. The higher the skill of forging, the better quality of weapons. For example, 1-4 skill level would create a defective weapon, 5-9 an inferior, 10-14 mediocre, 15-19 fine, 20-24 superior, 25+ master. Alchemy and magic however would not have a limit to how powerful the potion or spell can be. If, should you live to become an Alchemist of a skill of 50 (wow), then the potions you brew will be ten times more powerful than those of a level 5 and likewise with mages.
- Create your own business. You could buy a property and if you have a skill point in one of the business skills, create your own business. There would be an option to register your business with the town mayor and people would come to buy the products you sold. You could advertise with signs around a town (which also needed to be bought) and you would hire a manager to run your shop while you were away (though you need to go back and check every once in a while to restock it (and hope he wasn't robbing you- find an honest guy)). If you had a property out of town you could breed dragons or horses and bring them in town to sell them. All options would be available. And lastly, if you have a skill of 15 or something, you could open a school to teach others.
- A colosseum in the capital where you would compete in contests of strength, magic, or speed (with your horse), swordsmanship, bowmanship, &c for money.
- It would also be really cool if our character could be of the different races. You can choose the different country your character is from, but to be a dwarf, man, or elf would also be really fun. A dwarf would start off with a cleaving and blacksmith skill, the man a sword and mercantile (or something else), and the elf would have a bow skill and magic.
And... that's it for now.
