Just finished Book I - some criticism

[renkin]

As the topic says I just finished Book I, and I must say it's a wonderful little game. It's biggest charm in my opinion is its "beauty in simplicity" and atmosphere, as well as the pure fun of exploring unknown areas, solving puzzles, and finding equipment, etc.

However, while I enjoyed the game, I feel there are a number of things that should have been done differently to greatly improve the depth and replay value of the game, those being:

1. Make more use of damage types and the like. As far as I know, there's only one regular enemy in the game that deals magical damage. I'd like more variation among enemies. Some with insane resistances, some with different types of magical attacks, etc. Color coded variations of existing monsters would be fine.

2. Enemy interaction. Monsters that heal each other, group leaders that strengthen the abilities of the group. Anything like this that increases variation and tactics in battle.

3. More equipment. I don't mean hundreds of new sprites here, just variations of magical equipment and also more things equipment can change. I've played the game once but when I see an item in a shop, I already know before I hover it what it is and what it does, in most cases. There are simply too few magical items, and very often one is the best to use (for your specific character). Some randomization would be a good idea, to keep surprising the player, and also to give the player more ability to pick between equally useful equipment that does slightly different things. I'm not asking for Diablo II here, but something in that direction.

4. Some skills should be more useful, or just taken out. I mean, meditation and survival and pick locks sound cool, but they're really quite underbalanced. I can just force open anything with my axe, anyway. Be more radical in designing those skills. Make it so a character without pick locks CANNOT open a big portion of the locked doors (say, metal doors). Also, maybe get rid of the standard "percentage to pick" thing, since it's abusable (save, pick, load). Make it impossible to pick difficult doors if you're bad at it. Make spending skill points matter. Skills like alchemy did this in a good way, where you create better potions with more points.

5. Last of my main points, make it impossible to re-roll loot. Anything that allows abuse should be changed, in my opinion.

As you may notice, all of my points here regards more utilization of what you've already got. You've got interesting exploration, good atmosphere, fun fighting and character development. Tweak this to make it even better. Give the player more choices in combat, more surprising items to find in that strange cave beyond that puzzle/riddle (love those, by the way! it's one of the things that really makes the game shine). That's what I'd like to see from Book II, not so much a huge number of cool new features. Improve on what you have instead.

Now, a final (possibly more controversial) point and then I'm done.

6. Change resting. When the player choses to rest, have him rest for a period between 6-9 hours continuously where he is either interrupted or makes it through the rest. If he makes it, restore HP/MP, if he doesn't make it, restore nothing and put him against those monsters. This way, there's more tension in resting, and you can't rest for a second now and then to get mana without risking an encounter. Also get rid of mana/HP restoration while walking to get rid of boring abuse possibilities (you may have noticed I hate that kind of thing), and decrease the mana cost for spells perhaps.

Ok, long post, lots of blah. That's what I wanted to say. Thanks for a very nice game, these were my two cents. Please consider them and make Book II more of the same, but even better.

[BasiliskWrangler]

Thanks for your post renkin. My response would be:

1) Planned for or already in there.
2) Unsure how much new AI will be in there. More on this later.
3) Planned for or already in there.
4) Most skills will get a complete "rebalancing". Also, lock picking will become more useful simply because weapons will deteriorate in Book II (planned feature), meaning excessive bashing will ruin your weapons faster.
5) Planned for or already in there.
6) I actually like what you say here. It's widely known that interrupted sleep is almost as bad as no sleep at all. For full benefits, most people need (at a minimum) 2-3 hour blocks of sleep at a time for sleep to be effective. I can look into an improved resting function. Also, in Book II food and water will be a necessity, and one of the side-effects of this new rule is that players who do a lot of camping when they venture out will use up all their food and water faster. Meaning, food and water consumption still occurs whether you are exploring or resting, so people who abuse the resting feature will run out of supplies much sooner.

Thanks again for sharing your ideas.

[realmzmaster]

Regarding point 5, BW I assume you either are going to go with more set items for each chest or barrel. Or will the items be set for the entire game once a user creates their character. If you are going to go with more set items that will probably reduce replayability. If you set all the items randomly once the charcter is created that will keep the game replayable.

Regarding point 4 , what will be the point of classes unless only a certain minimum amount of points will be neccessary in any skill to successfully use it. Example, the impossible to pick doors would have to be part of side quests and not part of the main quest. Otherwise all the characters that are built will look roughly the same. Unless a pure fighter or cleric is allowed to bash the door at the cost of his weapon or weapons! The rogue will still be able to obtain a high pick lock skill to open the doors and the mage will use the pick lock spell that scales with his/her level.

Regarding point 6, will certain food be allowed to spoil? Dried beef jerky will last a whole lot longer than an apple. One will certain foods restore more mana or hit points than others?

Just the musings of a fan

[renkin]

Thanks for the reply BasiliskWrangler! What you're saying sounds very promising. However, about lockpicking:

What I felt made lockpicking a pretty much useless skill was that I could just carry a random cheap weapon with me that I used whenever I needed to bash a door or a chest. If it broke, so what, I could just buy a new one for a dozen gold coins. Make weapons deteriorate won't help this, will it? Sure, it's still nice as a pure flavor/comfort skill, but is it something worth spending skill points on? Can you reach new things by picking locks? The only usage I can think of is stealing shopkeepers' stashes without having to kill them, but that's all.

In response to realmzmaster regarding lockpicking: Well, for the main quest, one could simply always use breakable doors when there's a door you need to pass, that way you can get past the door in any manner you like. In addition to that, you could have certain side quests and locked rooms with metal doors, to give rogues a bonus for spending points on lockpicking. And you could provide shorter paths with some extra stuff laying around even in the main quest. Just my thoughts. I just feel every skill should give the player something more than saving time (or a small amount of money). It's better to limit the player entirely instead of forcing him to do boring things (like bashing a door with a dagger) because he didn't spend points on a skill he actually doesn't need for anything.

A related thing here is the first level of skills, the one that costs 3 points. I like the idea, but for some skills the usefulness of the first level is just too small compared to zero level. Alchemy, weapons skills, armor skills and magic skills and probably a few more did this quite well, but merchantile, for example, is almost useless at level one. There's no real feeling of reward for spending only a couple of points on it. Giving the player some useful (passive or active) ability for the first level (and maybe later levels) of any skill would be a good solution to this. Like how first level armor allows you to actually wear armor, and first level alchemy is needed to mix potions (and later levels give you higher level potions). It's not easy to come up with things for all skills, of course. Merchantile is a tricky one, for sure. Maybe just a slightly larger boost at level one would be enough. Hmm, you already stated that you're balancing all the skills, though, so basically forget what I said here if it's irrelevant with respect to your current plans.

Finally regarding point 5: Yes, I meant that the loot should be random but decided by some seed generated at character creation or something similar. Static items for all chests wouldn't be as fun.

Rude as I am, I'm going to add another thing to my personal wish list: More tough side quests and non-mandatory puzzles/riddles. I felt that everything in the game was quite easily solvable. I'd like a couple of puzzles to be truly dangerous to my sleeping pattern (although I know they are not easy to design, contact me if you need help ), and a couple of "bosses" on the side that are really tough to kill, maybe even much tougher than the "final boss". Maybe this is more of a skill balancing issue, but I was basically invincible with my character towards the end. I used cleaving, heavy armor, divination for boosting (cat's eyes, bless, etc) and alchemy. With my +3 on everything late in the game, nothing would hurt me at all (except old man goblin before his metamorphosis). It's always nice with some side things that you can try just for the heck of it with a character like that.

... Damn, I always end up with really wordy posts. So...

Again, thanks for the answer. All in all, you really seem to be on the right track with Book II. Good luck to you and the team!

[Kreador Freeaxe]

I completely disagree about the lock picking. I found it a very useful skill, as I find standing around bashing objects exceedingly boring. Also, I think it's one of the strong points of Eschalon that there are multiple ways to achieve almost any objective in the game. You can pick a lock, you can bash the chest, and so on. Perhaps, also, you didn't notice, but different chests and doors take different levels of damage from your blows, linked to the descriptions of them (simple wooden door, heavy banded door, etc.)

The change I would think makes sense is if there's a locked chest with something sensitive in it (like potions, or Demon Oil), there should be a chance that these things would break when the chest is bashed. Not so with picking the lock. Otherwise, I think the choice between bashing things and picking the locks is dependent on the player, and kudos for Basilisk making a game that can make us both happy.

[realmzmaster]

Which brings us back to classes. If you are going to role play a fighter-type or cleric-type then you would not spend points in lockpicking. You could allow a fighter-type or cleric-type to find or fight for a scroll (or item) that the fighter-type or cleric-type could read (use) to open certain tough doors (chest etc). Or the fighter-type or cleric-type could go on a quest for a mage or rogue. The mage or rogue would open the door (chest etc) or write a scroll (give item) that is readable (usable) by the fighter-type or cleric-type to open the door (chest, etc) on completion of the quest.

This way the tough doors can be placed on the main plot line. The fighter or cleric type would have to do extra quests, whereas the rogue can spend extra points in lockpicking and the mage's open lock (knock) spell would increase in power as the mage increases in level.

The same could be done for cartography. The character could have maps created for him by hiring a cartographer to accompany the character to map out the area. The character would have to protect the cartographer until the maps were turn over to the character. The character could hire the cartgrapher for a certain amount of time or for the entire adventure.

The cartographer could be dismissed at any time , but payment must be rendered for all maps and time spent, otherwise the character loses the maps. ( The charcter can kill the cartographer and take the maps, but the character would be arrested and tried for murder if he/she returns to any city. If your charcter is good, neutral or lawful, the character becomes evil and chaotic.)

The cartographer would only fight if attack and run away only to return after the fight, if the cartographer survives. If the cartographer dies all maps are lost because the maps were stolen or destroyed. If the maps are stolen, the character can go on a quest to find the one who killed the cartographer to recover the maps.

Or go classless. Have a series of questions during character creation that determine the character's base attributes and inclinations.

But, this could mean a lot more work for BW and his team.

Just a few thoughts.

[BasiliskWrangler]

I've used this analogy before and I will again here:

We all know that your character's class is his profession. Just like in the real world, your profession doesn't exclude you from acquiring different skills. For example, let's say you go through 12 years of college to become a Medical Doctor. Does that mean you can never change the oil in your car, simply because your "class" is not Car Mechanic? In fact, if cars are your passion, you may learn all the skills needed to completely rebuild a car engine, even though your main profession is still a Medical Doctor.

I think it makes no sense to limit players what they can and cannot do simply because of their chosen profession. Sure, this may make the concept of a "class" somewhat unnecessary, but I think that a class can still be a way for you [the player] to say "I'm going to take on the role of this character and play a certain way." If you are a Rogue, you should rely on Lock Picking. A fighter would keep a maul with him for those stubborn doors. A Mage would most surely rely on the Lock Melt spell. However, your class is not going to exclude you from playing a certain way. If you are a fighter who has great Dexterity, then perhaps lock picking would be better for you than bashing a locked door down with brute force.

[Kreador Freeaxe]

Also, if I remember correctly, there is a key to almost every locked door (except for the Easter Egg doors and a few random chests) in the game. If you look hard, you find the key and save the trouble of bashing the door or melting or picking the lock. So all doors on the main quest path are, in fact, openable by everyone. You find your own way through.

Personally, I think excessive differentiation between classes is annoying. Perhaps that's one of the reasons why I like Eschalon Book I more than most games I've tried in the last few years. It's the only game I've gone back and replayed numerous times. Most of the others, I play through, then move on to something else.

[realmzmaster]

Point taken, BW. But as I said If I want to role play a pure fighter therefore not dabbling in other classes skills I would not be able to unless a means is provided to open the chest doors etc. If I try to open a door and it says I need a particular key or item that is fine. I know I have to go looking.

I also understand your analogy, but if I become more proficient at my avocation than my vocation would you hire me to be your doctor. I am probably a much better Car Mechanic now. Your proficiency in your avocation should not be greater than your vocation, otherwise you may be in the wrong profession.

Also if you have to put more points into other skills you will become a jack of all trades and a master of none. Because to become a master at anything you have to devote a great deal of your time and devotion (skill points) to that endeavor.

The purpose of class has to be decided for the game. If it is used only at character creation to provide a baseline like race that is fine.

But if I am playing a paladin (lawful good by definition of the great gods of role playing ) or anti-paladin (lawful evil by definition) then class makes a difference. My actions dictate whether I fall from grace and my class.

But I also understand there are certain design limitations and specifications. Ultimately the designer decides how the classes will work. Those are design considerations with which you wrestle.

[BasiliskWrangler]

I also understand your analogy, but if I become more proficient at my avocation than my vocation would you hire me to be your doctor. I am probably a much better Car Mechanic now. Your proficiency in your avocation should not be greater than your vocation, otherwise you may be in the wrong profession.

This is very true. In the real world, I've known people who have attained degrees in certain fields only to have gotten jobs in completely different fields. In fact, I bet very few people stick to one specific vocation their whole life. Just because you start out as a Fighter doesn't mean you might not become enchanted with the idea of magic and shift skill paths to become some sort of BattleMage midway through the game. That is fine, though you'll never become a master Fighter nor a master Wizard.

Also if you have to put more points into other skills you will become a jack of all trades and a master of none. Because to become a master at anything you have to devote a great deal of your time and devotion (skill points) to that endeavor.

Yep, just like the Fighter example above. I have warned people about this since the earliest announcement of Book I, that if you try to acquire all skills, you'll be a master of none. That is part of the tactical aspect of character development.

But if I am playing a paladin (lawful good by definition of the great gods of role playing ) or anti-paladin (lawful evil by definition) then class makes a difference. My actions dictate whether I fall from grace and my class.

Yes, I am going to work at making classes have a bit more validity to them. I am looking into unique feats and certain challenges associated with specific classes.

[Lee Jae Dong]

I just finnished the game for the second time. First i made a mage, and second i made a warrior using cleaving.
Its a really great game, but ofcourse things can be improved. I really like renkins thoughts on this.

Lockpicking:
If i can bash anything with a weapon i will not waste aditional 3++ skillpoints on lockpinging.
Putting skills into lockpicking simply because its boring doesn't make it right. You level up at a very slow rate compared to games such as Diablo, which i think is a good thing but therefor i will not put points into skills i dont need.
For example, whats best. Lets say you have cleaving. you level up 5 times. now you can either get lvl 13 cleaving in that time or you can put some into lockpicking and get lets say 7 cleaving and 4 in lockpicking. If i can bash the door with my weapon it would be pointless to chose the lockpicking skill.
Ofcourse i will chose to walk around with cleaving lvl 13 which helps me killing monsters and opening anything in my way.

Someone mentioned that bashing a chest or such could result in ruining the content of the box. Thats a great idea.

I think what renkin ment with this is not only about the lockpicking. It was just an example. Its the principle that you should not have useless skills. For it is useless since even with 0 skillpoints added to cleaving i can bash anything down. Maybe it will take some time, but so what? I can still do it.. takes 1 minute or so to bash a door with 0 cleaving.
I dont remember all the skills right now, but meditation, lore and survival are also skills that need to be fixed.

Since you level up so slowly you would like to "feel" the lvl up. If you put 3 points into meditation and get lvl 1 meditation you wont feel a thing. Same thing with merchantile and many others.

I dont really understand the skill of shields. Lets say you have 1 points into shield and 1 point into heavy armor. If i lvl up, whats the difference between boosting each another?
The information on the skills must be much more obvious, sometimes you dont really get what the skills are doing. And since you cant feel difference when you levelup you still wont know what they do.

Some skills are very good. For example Heavy armor. Once you take 1 point into the armor you can feel the change directly since you can use new types of armors. This could be aplied to other skills as well. For example; mercentile could let you buy rare weapons and armors, or maybe you shouldnt be able to sell things for more than 50 gold unless you have mercantile, something like that.


About the save and load thing.
Every game with a save and load function can be abused. For example you can abuse drops in the chests, abuse getting diseased and much more. This would be fixed with adding the "save + exit" option. I mean whats the point of dying as it is now? It sais game over, but it actually means LOAD
Would be better if you get punnished for dying and cannot load. For example you could lose cash, experience etc and start back in town. This way it would be even more exiting and you would really not want to die.


I would like the books you find to contain more text if possible (just for the depth of the game) and also printed for the characters of Eschalon, not for the person playing a computer.
Why not add a few hints in the story books that could be of some help to the player later in the game.


You definately need to make more monsters that uses different resistances and dmg so that the players resistances and choice of attack matters. As renkin said there is only 1 monster in the game which uses elemental dmg.

I could structure this much better but its late and im abit tired. Anyway these are some thoughts and i will post again if i can think of more.

Again, this is constructive criticism and i would really like some of these things improved in the next game. I really enjoyed the first game but after playing it 2 times i started to notice some flaws. As renkin said, work on what you got rather than adding lots of new stuff.

Ciao

[realmzmaster]

Save + Exit does not stop Load abuse. All I have to do is load the game and load my save. If you want to stop load abuse, upon dying all saved games are erased. You must start over. But, I do not believe that will go over very well.

Most Action-RPG's strip the character of experience, items, armor, if the character dies. Dungeon Siege II, Titan Quest and Silverfall come to mind. These cames drop the character back at the last visited city or rebirth fountain. The character then has to fight his/her way back to the tombstone to regain the items. The only problem is if you exit and stop playing. All the monsters respawn between your character and the tombstone. I see no reason to clear out an area that I just got through clearing out. The reason I like Eschalon is that I can save at any point, without every monster being respawned in mass behind me.

This works fine if the Action-RPG is completely linear. Most Action-RPG's and RPG's are not completely linear. Your character has to go back and forth, even if it is only to buy supplies. This is why Action-RPG's have teleporters. Most Action-RPG's respawn monsters if you save and exit. The teleporters allow you to skip over areas that your character has already cleared . The reason why monster's respawn is in case the character drops, sells or destroys a quest item. Your character can go back fight back through the monsters and get the quest item again. The monsters also respawn in case you need more experience to level up. I do not mind if an area slowly re-populates or has random encounters, but repopulation in mass is not ok

I like the idea of fragile items. This concept is used in Neverwinter Nights II. If your character bashes a chest, there is a possibility that something will break. Gives your character a reason to put skill points in lockpicking.

If your character bashs a door , there should be a possibility that the whole wall will come crashing down injuring the character and blocking the path.

Some earlier RPGs would attach explosives to a door. If the character bashed the door, the explosives would blow up. The character had the possibility of dying. If the character had enough hit points it would survive only to be mopped up by whatever was behind the door, provided it stay out of the blast radius.

How about having monsters that dominate the mind and use meditation as a way to avoid it?

If your character enters a maze you need cartography to map it otherwise you have to blindly find your way out. If you put is on a major route that the character has to take back and forth, you then have a reason to put points in cartography.

I do not think you should see a major difference in the mercantile skill between 1 and 2 points, but between 1 and 4 there should be a noticable difference.

I cannot agree that if you do not have the mercantile skill that the most you can sell an item for is 50 gold. If I get the item appraised are you saying if I do not have the mercantile skill the merchant should not appraise it for more than 50 gold. If the merchant does appraise it for more than 50 gold, are you saying I can only sell it for 50 gold. Therefore every merchant has the potential to rip your character off. Therefore no honest merchants?

I can see if I get an item appraised I will not get the full value if I do not have the mercabtile skill because I cannot haggle well, but only 50 gold?

Just a few musings.

[renkin]

If your character bashs a door , there should be a possibility that the whole wall will come crashing down injuring the character and blocking the path.
Just a few musings.

But if that happened, would you load or not? Or if you didn't have a recent save, wouldn't you just get pissed at yourself for not having a recent save? That's the problem with skills with a "chance to success" in games where load/save is totally open. Some form of restrictive save/load structure would solve many such problems, like for example having the game save everything you do "behind the scenes" frequently. So that no action can be taken back. And also having some sort of respawn/penalty for dying, of course. I know, it's a bit unorthodox, but it would make every battle more exciting, and you'd think twice before trying to pick a lock with 2% chance to success (if a fail can break the lock). EDIT: And in that case your example with collapsing doors would also work well.

Without a changed save system like this, I'd rather see a change of skills so that it's less based on chance to success, and more levels of ability (like alchemy).

[Lee Jae Dong]

If you have "save+exit" function you cannot load abuse.
If you want to load a game, you have to press "save-AND-exit button" if your already in the game, thus the game is saved. Now if you want to load that game you will start where you saved and therefor you cannot abuse.

(However i can think of one exception. If you alt-f4 the game will probably not be saved. But then again, if you want to take it to that level of abuse why not program a cheat and use it or lie to your friend that you have already finnished the game. Save+exit button will probably stop most people from abusing though. Maybe some sort of random save time could be used to prevent this, for example the game saves once every 30 seconds or so.. but im not sure if it will cause lag or not. Anyway, if you use alt-f4 to abuse the game there isnt much you can do to prevent it.)

The thing with the 50 gold max was just an example of how to make the skill apply to the same rules as the other skills. If you take a skillpoint in heavy armor you benefit from it directly. This should be aplied to other skills aswell.
You kind of answered yourself there i think, why not combine merchantile with lore so that merchantile gives you a clue of what an item is worth, this way it will be very hard selling items without having the merchantile skill, thus making it matter more.

Im not saying that all monsters shall respawn after you save and exit. Just save and exit, then load and find your character where it was when you saved and exited.. i don't know how it can be more simple.

Doors come crashing down is also a good idea, but only if you apply the save&exit function. This way it cannot be abused. But it should not be able to happen in the main quest. For if it could, you would need lockpicking or lock melt to finnish the game, and i think you should be able to finnish it by using other skills.

You do not necessarily have to feel a big difference between 1-2 points. But between 0 and 1 point there should be a difference, just as with the armor skills. Then between 1 and 4 or something like that there should also be a big difference.. just enough to make it worth putting a whole level of points into the skill. Remember that the character was only like lvl 14 when the game finished.

Cartography will be hard to balance. For example if you enter a maze, i can just draw on a paper infront of me. Doing such things is actually more fun than using the actual cartography skill. However it could be balanced in such a way that you can buy maps in town or find maps on the field and read them. if you have the skill you can read them and therefor get a certain amount of the map revieled for you even if you have not explored it and if you have no cartography skill you simply cannot use them. This would probably only be useful the first time you play the game though but still better than it is now. Also maybe there are treasures hidden somewhere and the map reviels its location.. something like that.

Now again do not take the skill things literally, its just examples, ideas, its the principle of making a skill matter.

[realmzmaster]

Save + Exit only works if the user actually presses it. If I exit out the program without using save and exit (Some games have quit without saving) it reverts back to my last save. The workaround it to remove the previous save upon reloading. There is really no way to stop someone from abusing the save. I always backup the save folders or files in case of hard drive or kid crashes. I learned the hard way the reason for backing them up. It is just as easy to simply write over the bad save with my previous save folder or file.

Also, I would not be able to have multiple saves at different points of the game. I usually save before I talk to a character. For example the shady character in Blackwater who gives you the quest to kill or not kill Lilth. I can accept the quest and go kill Lilth and save my game in a different slot. Go back to my previous save before I talk to the character and refuse the quest to see how that plays out. I can then save that result and play both branches if I so chose. With Save + Exit I would not be able to do this. I would have to replay the entire game to that point to make the other choice.

Why should I be inconvenienced because someone wants to abuse the save function?

If you want to stop people from using the save to re-roll what is in a chest, just randomly set all chest and treasure items upon character creation. The only to get different items in a chest then is to replay the game with a new character.

Now again do not take the skill things literally, its just examples, ideas, its the principle of making a skill matter.

Why does a skill have to matter? How do you know if a skill does or does not matter? And when do you know whether it matters? We all pick up skills that at the time may not matter, but later on we find a use for it.

Let's take the mercantile skill as an example, I have 0 in the skill. I take a short sword to the merchant and he gives me 50 gold for it. I put one point in mercantile, the only way I will know if it makes a difference is if I take an identical short sword to the same merchant and get more for it. I will not be able to take it to a different merchant nor take a different item. Some skills are more subtle than others.

One way to make the mercantile skill (as said) better is to couple it with the lore skill. You use lore to identify the item and mercantile to appraise the item. The more points you put in both the better you are able to identify and appraise. But people will only do that if it advances the main quest.

Also, the merchants are used to identify items. If a merchant has already identified the item. I will know its relative worth. Unless the merchant only identifies the item and does not appraise it. If I know its relative worth and I do not have the mercantile skill , how will the merchant be able to give me less for it.

Certain skills show an immediate benefit, because you can wear the armor without penalty or certain weapons can be wielded. The cartography skill is another subtle skill. As you add more points the map becomes more detailed, but the difference between 0 and 1 is not that pronounced.