The Anti-Wishlist!! :D

[CrazyBernie]

I've decided to start keeping an anti-wishlist... things that I don't want to see in Book III because they'll add too much to development time, subtract from the core gameplay that is Eschalon, or just 'cause it might annoy me in general... It's easy to list all of the things you want.... I'm going to switch it up a bit! If anything here contradicts something that someone has on their wishlist... *shrug* Sorry. (But not really) You can't really make an anti-wishlist with out taking the risk of crushing someone's hopes and dreams!!

1. An updated graphics engine: no fear of this one, but I put it up just for the sake of putting it up. I might add a few garnishes here and there (or additional tilesets), but Book II's graphics are pretty much perfect for what it is.
2. A mapping spell: for some reason, this annoy's the crap out of me. As mentioned elsewhere, I support something that detects nearby objects (magickal, living, non-living, whatever), but that's it.
3. Any "All classes are created equal" balancing: Tweaks to prevent extremely under/overpowered characters are fine, but if this is going to be a skill-based game, then people need to adapt to the playing style of their characters, and some characters are going to be harder to play than others ("squishies" beware!)
4. Immeditately accessible skill trainers: maybe one or two to start out with, but there shouldn't be broad access to all of the trainers... smacks to much of hand-holding, IMHO.
5. Auto-Move: Tweaking the auto-walk feature is fine by me, but "click here to move here" isn't necessary, especially in a turn-based game.
6. An excessive number of new skills: One or two more plus tweaks is good... but there's plenty to develop in the game already.
7. An overly developed alchemy skill: More recipes/reagants is fine, but increasing the number of reagents might make it more complicated than it needs to be.
8. The entire scoring system: For me it was a novelty that wore off pretty fast... I found myself reloading saves to keep trying to get certain titles. I say scrap it to focus on story/gameplay; leave the challenge ideas in the forum.

I'm sure I'll think of more anti-features as others bring forth their wished for features... ^_^

[IJBall]

I've decided to start keeping an anti-wishlist... things that I don't want to see in Book III because they'll add too much to development time, subtract from the core gameplay that is Eschalon, or just 'cause it might annoy me in general...

1. An updated graphics engine: no fear of this one, but I put it up just for the sake of putting it up. I might add a few garnishes here and there (or additional tilesets), but Book II's graphics are pretty much perfect for what it is.
4. Immeditately accessible skill trainers: maybe one or two to start out with, but there shouldn't be broad access to all of the trainers... smacks to much of hand-holding, IMHO.
5. Auto-Move: Tweaking the auto-walk feature is fine by me, but "click here to move here" isn't necessary, especially in a turn-based game.

I agree with all of these.

2. A mapping spell: for some reason, this annoy's the crap out of me. As mentioned elsewhere, I support something that detects nearby objects (magickal, living, non-living, whatever), but that's it.

We've already got the Reveal Map, and I doubt it's going anywhere...

6. An excessive number of new skills: One or two more plus tweaks is good... but there's plenty to develop in the game already.

I count at least 2 new Skills I'd liked to see. Dunno if two is "excessive"!
Of course, I think I'd also like to see two original-Skills cut, so...

7. An overly developed alchemy skill: More recipes/reagants is fine, but increasing the number of reagents might make it more complicated than it needs to be.

I agree that I don't want to see that in Eschalon, with its already established game mechanics for Alchemy.

But, I do hope BW keeps this in mind, as a more "complicated" Alchemy scheme might well be welcome in a later game system developed by Basilisk.

[Dragonlady]

5. Auto-Move: Tweaking the auto-walk feature is fine by me, but "click here to move here" isn't necessary, especially in a turn-based game.

Pretty much agree except for the one above this statement. There are some of us who get Carpal Tunnel from an excess of clicking to move from one side of the screen to another. Even holding the key/mouse down while moving pointer gets to be too much at times. One of the reasons I stopped playing Rogue type games.

[Randomizer]

I agree with Dragonlady about the auto move for different reasons. When the zone is cleared, I like to be able to move through it without having to keep adjusting the cursor in walk mode. I spend enough time in Spiderweb Software games just traveling from one place to another with their auto move, but at least I can do something else without watching the screen.

[Evnissyen]

5. Auto-Move: Tweaking the auto-walk feature is fine by me, but "click here to move here" isn't necessary, especially in a turn-based game.

Pretty much agree except for the one above this statement. There are some of us who get Carpal Tunnel from an excess of clicking to move from one side of the screen to another. Even holding the key/mouse down while moving pointer gets to be too much at times. One of the reasons I stopped playing Rogue type games.

What she said.

This is also the only one I disagree with Bernie about. Not just because of the repetitive motion issue (which not only I suffer from, but others I've known have also suffered from) but also because, well, the clomp-clomp-clomp gets tedious, and it's not really necessary.

Avernum 4-6 -- 100% turn-based games -- have the click-and-go feature, so it's not incompatible at all with games that are 100% turn-based (as opposed to combat-only turn-based, of course) . . . in fact, it's largely the lack of the click-and-go feature that, for me, anyhow, makes Avernum 1-3 virtually unplayable. Obviously, Eschalon is much better -- in A1-3 you kept bumping into walls and getting stuck, so you ended up having to use the keyboard, and I really, really hate using my keyboard to move around, in a game. In Eschalon, at least, when you hit something you can still move the mouse and go around it. And, of course, you can just click on the mousewheel and let it go.

All the others, though, I agree with.

...And if I can add any features that appear in Book II which I do not want to see in Book III:

The 'official' challenges -- these challenges were originally forum-based and were done for our own amusement... putting them in the game is not just pointless but distracting, if there's no significant and obvious as-you-play XP gain from it . . . the beta-testers say there's an XP gain... it's not actually apparent, though. I say get rid of it, since I don't see how it makes the game better, and BW doesn't have to waste any coding time on improving it in terms of balancing.

...Others probably disagree, though.

[CrazyBernie]

Ah, the infamous CTM (click-to-move)... it screams of real-time to me. I understand the wrist and finger breaking concerns, and the lazy-gamers who don't want to manually direct their characters. I just don't feel that it fits in well with Eschalon's gameplay.

With Spiderweb games, you have a system that "enters" and "exits" combat mode... Eschalon doesn't really differentiate (other than playing some battle music when you start swinging). I've played the Avernum 6 (and 5?) demos, and the CTM feels very unnatural in an entirely turn-based environment. It's almost as though the turn-based nature of the game is interrupting the CTM functionality, and the lack of character animation in Avernum really makes it stand out.

It works really well in a game like Fallout, where regular gameplay is in realtime, and only the combat aspect is turn-based. It's also good in Heroes of Might and Magic (which is entirely turn-based), where you have to click once to set the path, and again to execute that path. Of course, HOMM is half RPG, half Strategy (or more like 25% RPG and 75% Strategy)... so it's a bit of a different beast.

In Eschalon, I think the combination of auto-walk, quick travel, and portal options more than makes up for the lack of CTM. In fact, it would be one of those options I would only agree to if it was optional... it might even be a deal breaker if it was included without the ability to disable.

The 'official' challenges -- these challenges were originally forum-based and were done for our own amusement... putting them in the game is not just pointless but distracting, if there's no significant and obvious as-you-play XP gain from it . . . the beta-testers say there's an XP gain... it's not actually apparent, though. I say get rid of it, since I don't see how it makes the game better, and BW doesn't have to waste any coding time on improving it in terms of balancing.

...Others probably disagree, though.

Are you referring to the optional rules or the titles you get for completing certain feats? If the latter, I'd be pretty much in agreement, but you don't get any extra XP from those... the extra XP comes when you enable all 4 of the rules (aka Hardcore Mode)... it's really only enough to maybe get you an extra level by the end of the game.

The optional rules I don't mind, but I'd like to see a bit more... customizability in terms of difficulty. Ideally I'd have a hybrid difficulty + rules mode... I've been working on a matrix... maybe I'll share it with everyone, or maybe I'll just send it to BW instead.

But the titles I would definitely vote out... as a matter of fact, it's going on the list!!

[Evnissyen]

Yeah, I was referring to the in-game challenges . . . the ones you see when you click on the Stats icon. Don't like 'em.

As for the difficulty options, I have no problem with those . . . at least none significant enough to bother getting into.

[KillingMoon]

When it comes to changes to the game my anti-wishlist would be pretty extensive as well. Where the graphics are concerned, for my part the existing portraits may be recycled - adding ones is good, but the old ones may stay.
Armour - many ideas have been brought forward about a different damage calculation system, but here I wouldn't throw much overboard as well. A bit of rebalancing in the style that CrazyBernie has suggested wouldn't do much harm, but I wouldn't change the main principles here; the current system works.

[Painted Lady]

5. Auto-Move: Tweaking the auto-walk feature is fine by me, but "click here to move here" isn't necessary, especially in a turn-based game.

I agree with CB on this one. Eschalon has a certain feel, and I'm not sure that changing the walking feature would be the best thing at this point.

In BW's next series it might make sense to "click here to get here." However, I think he is best served by focusing on the Book III story-line rather than in making major engine changes.

[GameFace]

The entire scoring system: For me it was a novelty that wore off pretty fast... I found myself reloading saves to keep trying to get certain titles. I say scrap it to focus on story/gameplay; leave the challenge ideas in the forum.

Personally, my one contribution to the Book III Wishlist would be to ask to *keep* the challenges. I found that they contributed greatly to my enjoyment upon replaying the game. For me, it was like having additional puzzles to solve in terms of character development. It can be hard to keep track of whether you are meeting certain challenges without the game keeping tabs. I don't care at all about the final 'score' or what 'accomplishments' are displayed on that last page, but I really liked being able to glance at the challenge screen during play.

-Rebecca

[MyGameCompany]

I'll be very disappointed if Basilisk Games gives into the small minority that complain about the walking speed being too slow.

I totally agree! I think a wider variety of quick travel spots would be sufficient.

[IJBall]

I'll be very disappointed if Basilisk Games gives into the small minority that complain about the walking speed being too slow.

While I generally agree with this, I also don't see a problem with allowing the player to pre-set the "walking speed" via a game option (speed slider?), if it's not too much trouble for BW to implement.

That way, everyone can get what we want.

[KillingMoon]

If the game runs like this it means your computer isn't good enough. It should run like this. If it plays like this and you find it slow then it is very likely that you suffer from a short attention span.

I wonder if BasiliskWrangler hasn't simply sped up the original footage to make this clip, it's a promo after all. On my computer I'm not getting that speed, although it's also not as slow as in the slow clip.
I can run games like Dragon Age Origins and Civilization V, but Eschalon has been a nightmare with its lag and constant crashing. Book II I still managed to finish somehow, Book I gives me more serious problems. What are the true minimum specs to run this game? Obviously we need more than just a couple of gigabites to run this game smoothly. I'll probably need to pass on Book III until I get a seriously high end computer, but if you look at the game you do wonder why it has to be such a beast to run?

I'm nearly certain that the fast clip is not made with a machine that matches the minimum system specs as they are officially given.

Not that I'm in favour of a drastic design change. Book III doesn't have to break with anything the way it was in Book I and II. Some players will only be satisfied if the character can actually run, but that is perhaps a small minority. The people who have a problem with slow walking in general on the other hand don't look like a small minority, too many posts have complained about that.
It's nearly always in wooded areas that we are getting the slow-down. There has to be something in the way they are done that is hard on our systems. I think CrazyBernie once suggested looking into that.

Quick travel is okay, but I actually like the sense of distance, time and space. I still like to see my character physically walking through a landscape, rather than have him zip-zapping all over the place. An occasional beam back to the front door is okay, but that's normally as far as I like to go in a game.
Areas can be designed in a way that you don't have to walk all the way from Brazil to Nova Zembla for a quest and then have to walk back to Uruguay to pick up a trinket that someone in Finland is needing...

Actually, this post has no content. We need Book III, so we have something new to chat about!

[Kreador Freeaxe]

It depends largely on your particular graphics card. Because Eschalon is tile-based with overlaid sprites, Every time you take a step, the tiles have to be redrawn. Other games like Dragon Age don't use tiles, but skins, and the modern graphics chips have been optimized for this. Funny you mention Civ V, because I always run into problems running that, especially as more of the world gets exposed. It can drag on forever redrawing stuff. I've never had that kind of issue with Eschalon.

[KillingMoon]

Civ 5 is definitely a game that is much more difficult to run than it should have been. I read in the Civ 5 forum that graphic card designers had to rethink the way they made their cards because of Civ 5's revolutionary rendering system. Why should a strategy gamer care about a revolutionary rendering system?
Civ III had lots of trade routes that had to be checked every turn, this was blamed for long interturns at the time. They completely got rid of trade routes in Civ 5, the game is much more simplistic under the hood, the landscape, although looking good, is a flat landscape, but yet the game is much more demanding of your system than Civ has ever been.

It seems some game developers just do what they want and hope the rest of the world will catch up with them - while strategy gamers are suggesting decent mechanics in the game, are pointing to flaws and are producing long posts to illustrate how more depth can be achieved in the game and are hoping the game developers are catching up with them.

I didn't know about how 'tiles' can be more difficult than 'skins', if that's the right way to put it. I did need to buy a new graphics card about 6 months age, as the old one failed, and the new one is 6 times more powerful than the old one was, but also the old one had no problem at all with tile based games like Heroes of Might and Magic III or Age of Wonders. Those games don't look more simple than Eschalon, apart from day - night effects and illumination of each individual tile.
But with both graphic cards, the new one of a different make than the old one, requiring new driver software as well, the problems with running Eschalon are fairly similar. It's better with the new one, but there's still lag, sometimes the game only wants to run in windowed mode and sometimes graphical glitches are disfiguring the map. All stuff I don't have with other, theoretically more demanding games, tile based or not.