The Drunken Lizard Pub

For the record it's probably good if I put some of mine up here too:

[*]An editor! That's probably gonna happen if it's up to BW, and that would make me very happy.
[*]Thrown Weapons to become a viable skill! It's broken the way it is at the moment.
[*]Real mountains. The current ones look fine, but they look fine as boulders, they're just not mountainous enough. Have a look at the editor of Age of Wonders II for inspiration, and also to see that it only need to be 3 tiles in the editor.
Perhaps an additional advantage of more stone instead of trees would be that it would get rid of some of the lag on slower computers that is now going on in wooded areas.
[*]More flavour in the characters - characters that are more than a tool handing out a quest. Ideally characters that develop with the story - people where we learn more about as the game progresses.

KillingMoon wrote:For the record it's probably good if I put some of mine up here too:

• More flavour in the characters - characters that are more than a tool handing out a quest. Ideally characters that develop with the story - people where we learn more about as the game progresses.

Yeah, the only character in either Book who sort of progressed the way you're suggesting is Lilith in Book I. (It's too bad Darus didn't get a chance to stick around Book II, because he could have "developed" similarly...)

But there definitely needs to be more characters like that.

Like I've suggested elsewhere, I hope BW considers taking on somebody like CrazyBernie to help spread out the work on NPC character development - I think 2 (or more) people could make the task of creating numerous NPCs easier...

Another possible idea, although at that particular point it might be too late?: Allow each beta-tester to add and develop a NPC of his/her choice. This might, actually, increase the desirability of being a tester . . . maybe?

If BW officially announces Book III, and if it makes it to beta stage, and if he asks for playtesters, and if he selects me as one, I'd love to contribute to writing dialog. Character dialog seems like a pretty easy thing for non-professional developers to do, and could potentially add a lot of depth to the game.

I'd like to see story/plot lines expanded, like many posters here. I've been replaying Book 1 and I'm convinced there is a great story behind Lorus of Eastleaf. Yes, I know there's a Seuss reference, there. But in this world, why does he have such an elaborate tomb? Why was he the greatest? What heroic life did he lead, and why is his tomb overrun with deadly poltergeists? (And yes, I'd like to see poltergeists come back in III). Also, who is behind the goblin horde? Where does their story intersect with the Orakur? And the end of Book II was...unsatisfying. THere is that law that if you draw comparisons to Hitler or the 3rd Reich on a smackboard, you've lost the argument, and likewise, if you end a story with "it was all a dream," or "it was the aliens" you've run out of ideas. Don't go forward, go backward...something old, something evil that won't die...old things fester and linger and come back angrier...

mph66 wrote:... if you end a story with "it was all a dream," or "it was the aliens" you've run out of ideas. Don't go forward, go backward...something old, something evil that won't die...old things fester and linger and come back angrier...

But that's exactly what is revealed in book II. Yes, aliens. But not in the deus-ex-machina sense of having a UFO swoop in at the last moment and steal the hero away. In this story, the aliens are a group that has been exerting influence on the world of Eschalon for centuries, and one of them has finally gone mad waiting to leave, like the one person in the group at the mall who doesn't have nearly as much shopping to do as the rest. The One is precisely an "old thing" that has been festering and coming back angrier every episode of this game, who is very unlikely to be dead yet. He was behind the goblins getting organized as well, remember?

And for book III, you now have all of the aliens really stranded on Eschalon, with two of their crux capacitors out of the picture.

And you only believe they're aliens because you're taking the word of a being that you found in a cage who could have been a projection, or just plain lying to you for some reason.

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