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[Detonator]

My first thought for munchers is that they can eat just about any sort of item for a temporary buff (the more useful the item, the better the buff).  This could be his way of dealing with vendor trash, since he doesn't need as much money for weapons and armor.

[James Edward Smith]

I like both of your ideas.

Since it's about moles, all the characters need the ability to dig through walls, and that ought to be a major factor in the game. Adjust class balance by changing the speed with which they can dig, and maybe the amount of waste dirt produced. Also needed: the ability to use waste dirt to make new walls.

Yeah, I want to have exactly that, lots of digging mechanics that are sort of like what you see in Dwarf Fortress a little, though more combat and escape oriented and less architecture oriented. Stuff like causing cave ins to bury persuing monsters, openning up pitfalls under unforunate monsters' feet. I think all moles will be able to dig in some limited capacity, but only miners will have the combat digging moves availiable to them or they will be the only ones that usually reach a high enough level in digging to access them. Mole Muggers will be able to dig sneaky things if they have enough time though, like foot holes and pit-traps and the like, eventually being able to make dreaded spike pits.

I like both of your Muncher ideas. I'm leaning more towards something like what Bongo said though just because that way it can be more of a general game mechanic that Munchers excel at than yet an other Muncher only mechanic (like his bite attacks). I think that is more intune with the general feel of roguelikes in that, all classes can attempt anything, some just excel in certain areas and some are comepletely worthless in some areas. Also I want to have items like armour and weapons, and a muncher eating a weapon and then gaining a bonus, while playing to his goofy persona as a bottomless eating machine, is going a little to far into the absurd maybe. Him being able to eat a lava worm and not only beable to stomach it but actually benefit from it where a Miner attempting the same thing would just burn himself terribly, I think works just as well as a sort of goofy ability that a expert eater would have and yet retains some logic.

Just for further reference for the other classes

Miner - Heavy armor user and weapon master who is good at digging (since high weapon skill equates to good digging skills)
Mugger - Crafty rogue, master of speed, stealth, disguise, unlocking, and valueable item apraisal.
Mystic - Wise soothsayer, master of magic, alchemy, and all other things arcane such as magical item identification and enchanting

[Bongo Bill]

I guess it depends if you want it to be strictly or loosely classist. That is, can any character theoretically acquire any single skill, or are certain things off-limits, and, if so, is it because of class restrictions, or just because there's no mathematical way to build up the needed stats?

[Saturn]

EAT PRIME NUMBERS TO INCREASE YOUR STATS.

BUT WATCH OUT FOR THOSE GODDAMN TROGGLES.

[James Edward Smith]

Maybe all this Molehill Mountain talk can be split.

But as for weapon ideas; I want weapon skill to equate to damage done or chance to hit with weapons as well as how well a mole can dig with them. The currently planned weapon types are

Picks
Shovels
Spades
Teeth (unarmed fighting) paws (unarmed digging)

I was thinking today that I could use some other ideas for weapon types. But now that I look at that list, I'm actually pretty happy with it. It's maybe a little limited, but it's simple and understandable and really, I don't want to add in other weapon types if there's no reason to have them. Other types of weapons should either serve to differentiate classes or provide different weapon mechanics. From that list I can see having shovels be better at digging quickly through dirt where as picks can break boulders faster but are slower at actually digging. You also can't move waste soil with picks. Spades are a lighter, in between weapon that only require one hand and/or strike faster. In combat, picks can cause deep wounds that bleed, shovels can stun.

Edit: Thinking back on this I may give spades the ability to blind the target on critical hits and give shovels the chance to block incoming damage as well as their chance to stun. This would be offset by the fact that picks do much more damage and spades attack much faster.

With the above list in mind, Miners are the masters of all or almost all weapons, muggers are best with spades but can make use of other weapons decently, and Munchers and Mystics are poor with most weapons but compensate with their other talents (superior unarmed fighting and superior magical item use respectively).

One idea that springs to mind are off-hand wieldable items for the two less weapon oriented classes that boost what they are good at through a passive buff or chance on hit ability. My immediate ideas are talismans for Mystics and forks for Munchers.

[James Edward Smith]

I was sitting on the can today and I didn't feel like playing Patapon on my PSP cause I'll I'm doing in it right now is grinding to get three decent Megapons (these are not ultimate pons, their name is a pun on "Megaphone" because they attack with music shot from big horns) and also because PSPs use optical media and there for have to load and any company that figured that'd be a good idea for a portable system and would be able to compete with the current gameboy is retarded. So, I picked up my nesGBA with it's 3rd party flash memory cartrige in it and started playing some Metroid: Zero Mission. My saves were lost because the little battery in my flash cart has run out and so saves often wipe on it. So I started playing from the start again for the umpteenth time and was sort of bored despite the game's inherent good design, satisfying visuals and tight controls.

It was boring because I'd played it before. It strikes me that it would be pretty cool to make a metroidvania that was randomly generated like nethack. Certain key areas and boss rooms would be static and unchanging but the mazes that needed to be explored before getting to one of the recognizable pregenerated places like those would be different everytime, constructed out of building blocks. You could even have it set up so that certain rooms or situations were pre-canned but the way that you discovered them or entered the area was one of a few possibilites. One time you would smash a big boulder through a gate that led to the Forgotten One's chamber, the next time you would fall through a bittle ceiling and land in the room unexpectedly after walking over it and breaking it accidentally because you hadn't encountered one of those floors before in previous play-throughs.

I think a game like that where you made it so that good players could actually beat the whole game without having to get all or maybe even any of the special items but where newer players would want to take more time and explore more until they found all the help they could get would be pretty cool. That way you could have a lot of new power granting items that weren't necessary so it would be okay if they didn't appear every game, but that would always be useful.

I'd set the game in 1600 Mexico. You could be a Spanish Conquistador, a Spanish Priest, an Aztec Warrior, or an Aztec Shaman.

[Bongo Bill]

It's very difficult to tune a random stage generator to make completable games, much less interesting one. It works better when your game is tuned to fundamentally work with just about any layout. That'd work better with some Metroidvanias than others.

Incidentally, ever given MetroidRL a try?

[James Edward Smith]

I dunno, I think it sort of comes down to, stuff like, jump X is doable via wall jump but hi-jump makes it easily accessable. etc.

The point of the idea is to see if you can do enough stuff like that, for enough power ups to make it fun while keeping some of the same fun found in nethack. That is to say, the fact that players can learn what works and what doesn't, what they can do to beat things that doesn't seem immediately apparent (bombjump :: make excalibur).

[Detonator]

So I've been thinking up the design for a tactical RPG, here's what I got so far.  I'll try to keep this as organized as possible.

Main points:

• Turn-based tactical combat on a square grid
• Small parties, no more than 5-6 characters
• Small, 3D battlefields that have many interactive elements
• Emphasis on close combat and strategic maneuvering therein

The one thing I want to avoid is combat where the characters stand next to each other and trade blows other until one falls down.  Once characters are engaged in close combat, they will attempt to maneuver each other into a strategic position to gain an advantage (which lowers the opponent's defense).

Once engaged, a character has three choices on how to fight on his turn.

• Advance: The character forces his opponent out of his square and into an adjacent one.  If the opponent's back is to a wall, he can use this to gain an advantage.  Using this lowers the attacker's defense.
• Hold: The character either stays in his current square, or shifts to a square on either side of his enemy.  No change to the attacker's defense.
• Defend: The character must back up, and cannot use this unless the square behind him is available.  His defense increases, but attack power decreases.

Each of these choices is also an attack, as it is assumed that the duel is ongoing while these shifts are being made.  The advance option is risky and will wear you out quickly, but gives you an opportunity for a huge advantage.  Advantages can be gained through the environment, such as higher ground, or through teamwork, such as flanking.  There will be opportunities for double or triple teaming an enemy, but I have not worked out specifics for that yet.

When a battle is over, experience will be rewarded for speed (number of rounds) and tactics (number of advantages employed).  A slow, thoughtful battle will be as rewarding as a quick, brutal one.  However, the best results come from a battle where advantages are employed quickly, making the victory even quicker as a result.

[Kazz]

Illustrations plz

[James Edward Smith]

So I've been thinking up the design for a tactical RPG, here's what I got so far.  I'll try to keep this as organized as possible.

Main points:

• Turn-based tactical combat on a square grid
• Small parties, no more than 5-6 characters
• Small, 3D battlefields that have many interactive elements
• Emphasis on close combat and strategic maneuvering therein

The one thing I want to avoid is combat where the characters stand next to each other and trade blows other until one falls down.  Once characters are engaged in close combat, they will attempt to maneuver each other into a strategic position to gain an advantage (which lowers the opponent's defense).

Once engaged, a character has three choices on how to fight on his turn.

• Advance: The character forces his opponent out of his square and into an adjacent one.  If the opponent's back is to a wall, he can use this to gain an advantage.  Using this lowers the attacker's defense.
• Hold: The character either stays in his current square, or shifts to a square on either side of his enemy.  No change to the attacker's defense.
• Defend: The character must back up, and cannot use this unless the square behind him is available.  His defense increases, but attack power decreases.

Each of these choices is also an attack, as it is assumed that the duel is ongoing while these shifts are being made.  The advance option is risky and will wear you out quickly, but gives you an opportunity for a huge advantage.  Advantages can be gained through the environment, such as higher ground, or through teamwork, such as flanking.  There will be opportunities for double or triple teaming an enemy, but I have not worked out specifics for that yet.

When a battle is over, experience will be rewarded for speed (number of rounds) and tactics (number of advantages employed).  A slow, thoughtful battle will be as rewarding as a quick, brutal one.  However, the best results come from a battle where advantages are employed quickly, making the victory even quicker as a result.

This sounds pretty amazing, as far as gridan' games go anyway. Don't get me wrong, I love FFT and Disgayx0rz. The thing with those games though, is that it was really the character development and job systems that I loved and not so much the actual "tacticallness" of their combat.

You said you want the game to focus on close combat so that this whole melee, fighting for advantage system can be the main focus of the game. I think that makes sense, I don't think I'd want any magic or something where people can just pick a square and blast someone. Maybe spells that alter the strategic significance of certain tiles would be cool though.

What do you think though, of the idea of having the reach of people's weapons affect combat though? Like, a fighter with a spear would want to keep people at a distance and could pester anyone trying to get close to him, but once people did get close to him, they would have the advantage if they had a hatchet or whatever. You could keep this simple with just different lengthed melee weapons or play it out to an extreme by having crossbows and guns and stuff like that play into this some how where they would still use the same system of engaging, just with a wider and more affectable range of possibilities (crossbow is unusable with an enemy "all up in your grill" but is very effective if you have some distance on the target and they are not acting defensively or have some cover like terrain or a shield.

[Kazz]

I was thinking that last night.  You can't really Advance on someone with a spear unless you're willing to get poked.  Maybe a halberd wouldn't let you Advance on that character at all.

[James Edward Smith]

Only if the spear is leveled at you, you could attack him from the side. Also you can have deflection upon advancing if you are good at advancing with whatever weapon you have or even if you just have a longer spear yourself.

I think it would just be good to have all weapons have the chance to stab you if you advance on someone wielding them who is defending but that stuff like spears are the weapons that have the high chance of doing this. It would be at least one of their advantages over other weapons if not their main one.

[Detonator]

Good thoughts, guys.  I want to keep things simple and somewhat abstract, so I was thinking to seperate swords and polearms by class.  All polearms function the same, but they can only be used by Lancer characters.

As for magic, I think it would be a support class with little or no direct damage.  Same thing for any sort of ranged class.  If you have too many ranged characters, your melee characters will be overwhelmed by the numbers, and then the support characters will be easily slaughtered once the meat shields are gone.

I would love to see a magic class that focuses on mutating the battlefield to give his allies the advantage.

[Catloaf]

Could a whore get away with it if she called herself a "Fluffer (or understudy) for amateur porn?"

Would it work if she took a digital camera with her and would offer a fee to "buy" the video and destroy it, or a discount for allowing her to put it on the internet?

[Kazz]

 

These aren't the stray thoughts we're looking for.

[Brentai]

I just realized something fundamental about most MMORPGs.

The more you do, and the more powerful you are, the less important you as an individual become, and more reliant on other theoretically powerful but completely dependent individuals.

Why doesn't it ever seem to work the other way?  Wouldn't it make more sense to have players form larger groups in the beginning, when they're all much more limited and specialized, and as they grow stronger and more diverse they break away into smaller units until finally becoming singular heroes?

I'm sure there are arguments against this from a design perspective, but it also seems to be a fairly untested concept.

[Detonator]

I just realized something fundamental about most MMORPGs.

The more you do, and the more powerful you are, the less important you as an individual become, and more reliant on other theoretically powerful but completely dependent individuals.

Why doesn't it ever seem to work the other way?  Wouldn't it make more sense to have players form larger groups in the beginning, when they're all much more limited and specialized, and as they grow stronger and more diverse they break away into smaller units until finally becoming singular heroes?

I'm sure there are arguments against this from a design perspective, but it also seems to be a fairly untested concept.

Well, it's pretty simple from a design perspective.  Once people hit a max level, they tend to bunch up, making it much easier to form large groups. 

Most MMORPGs are designed to be more fun in a social group, so having that be the end reward is much smarter than having the most fun at the beginning, then growing bored as you do stuff alone at the end of the game.

Once people are at the end of the game, they're experts in their role, and are more competent in being part of a team.  Having the new people form large groups would be an exercise in frustration (see TF2, would you rather team with new people or experts?  Especially if those experts are your friends).

Yeah, it makes little narrative sense, but in a design perspective, there seems like little reason to do anything else.  Maybe it would be fun, but entirely cutting out group content from the endgame would be destroying the lasting appeal of playing.

And the final, most obvious thing: if you didn't want to be in a group, why the hell are you playing a multiplayer game?  Singles PVP?

[Kazz]

I recall discussing a game about the African savannah with Bal.  At the start, the players are Meerkats or something, and must stick together in order to survive.  Gradually, as the player gains experience, they can choose to be animals higher on the food chain, until they are elephants who can shitstomp anything they come across.

Elephants still tend to travel in herds, though.  That way they can shitstomp harder.

[James Edward Smith]

I'd rather be the Boers, or the AIDS virus.