3.5 Items, Skills, And Abilities, Minimal Gameplay Change
Posted: Fri Nov 02, 2007 6:43 am
First of all, I love this game, always have, always will. I have
nothing but respect for the administrators and their efforts to
keep my dearest love alive.
With that said, I would like to toss in my 2 cents on this upgrade
you have been discussing for months. I have not read anything
in these forums, because quite frankly i am scared of what i might
find.
I feel that a massive change to the system in place could greatly
frustrate and further alienate the current playerbase. So what
I propose is quite simple. Work these changes in slowly, and
as you have always done in the past, pay great attention to detail.
Open a suggestion forum just on this subject with instructions
on how to play the new aspect of the game that you have created
without imposing it upon a player who may or may not understand
or feel comfortable with said change.
Now, i do have a good working knowledge of 3.5 rules, and how they
work in the dungeons and dragons forgotten realms vision. I have
played dungeons and dragons online stormreach, and i found the
system to be intuitive.
Here are a few ways I believe you could implement aspects of 3.5
rules without changing too much of gameplay, based on my experience
as a programmer, as well as my love of games after this genere.
Items and Relics:
Having rewards for adventures for each member of a party based
on that particular characters needs. In dndol there were "missions"
that you could repeditively do, over and over and it became
a grind much like it is now.
I propose that you take this to the next level, design a system
of adventure that supprises your players by changing, and being
un predictable. Currently when we go on an adventure say to izan
or even tiamat, we have a set strategy, if we stray from this
strategy, we die.
If we put some randomness about the adventures, i think it could
keep alot of us who truely want nothing more than adventure
a good warm fuzzy....and maybe a stiffy, perverts.
Example:
You have say a quest master in ghore that does evil above ground
players in mind. He sends you into a randomly generated map, that
has with in it, chests front to back with growing treasure which
is both random and based on that characters needs.
Scale the difficulty based upon the groups makeup, and let them
choose, easy, medium, hard and have rewards scale up as well.
Items in 3.5 are quite simple, you have base items that can have
special properties, and relics that have several. And further
down the road, i havent seen the epic campaigns yet, but
i am looking forward to them.
Each race gets innate skills based on their hometown that can
improve their skills in certain areas, like I noticed that
Waterdeep had the following skills given to all players:
Artist, Cosmopolitan, Education, Smooth Talking, Thug and Twin
Sword Style.
Artist helped bards with their skills, Cosmopolitan helps enchanters
as well as bards, and education gives bonuses to wizard and sorcerer
types. Smooth Talking helps you barter better prices from merchants
as well as making mobs pay less attention to you. Thug obviously
makes you tougher and twin sword style means even mages can dual
wield innately albeit not proficiently.
These skills as well as ones you can chooose to customize your
character could easily be added to the current system as well
as preserving the current system.
These skills combined open a whole new set of abilities based
on your region of birth, class, race and choices. The pre-requisite
skill system could be used to augment the current system, instead
of replacing it all together like i assume you are attempting.
Lower the effectiveness of the current skill system, and let
players augment themselves as they choose. In ddo, we could
reset our skills once a week, which gives you enough practice
to tweak your skills how you want them.
The introduction of player crafting could also open up a whole
new experience for the players as well. Allowing us to make
original items, with our own strings, choose our stats, which
would require components, and in the expert level, add innate
abilities to these items.
I'll ramble more some other time, its later here and im trying to
get yotus killed. Please give me bad or good feedback on this idea
since i think 2.0 should be a community discussion.
nothing but respect for the administrators and their efforts to
keep my dearest love alive.
With that said, I would like to toss in my 2 cents on this upgrade
you have been discussing for months. I have not read anything
in these forums, because quite frankly i am scared of what i might
find.
I feel that a massive change to the system in place could greatly
frustrate and further alienate the current playerbase. So what
I propose is quite simple. Work these changes in slowly, and
as you have always done in the past, pay great attention to detail.
Open a suggestion forum just on this subject with instructions
on how to play the new aspect of the game that you have created
without imposing it upon a player who may or may not understand
or feel comfortable with said change.
Now, i do have a good working knowledge of 3.5 rules, and how they
work in the dungeons and dragons forgotten realms vision. I have
played dungeons and dragons online stormreach, and i found the
system to be intuitive.
Here are a few ways I believe you could implement aspects of 3.5
rules without changing too much of gameplay, based on my experience
as a programmer, as well as my love of games after this genere.
Items and Relics:
Having rewards for adventures for each member of a party based
on that particular characters needs. In dndol there were "missions"
that you could repeditively do, over and over and it became
a grind much like it is now.
I propose that you take this to the next level, design a system
of adventure that supprises your players by changing, and being
un predictable. Currently when we go on an adventure say to izan
or even tiamat, we have a set strategy, if we stray from this
strategy, we die.
If we put some randomness about the adventures, i think it could
keep alot of us who truely want nothing more than adventure
a good warm fuzzy....and maybe a stiffy, perverts.
Example:
You have say a quest master in ghore that does evil above ground
players in mind. He sends you into a randomly generated map, that
has with in it, chests front to back with growing treasure which
is both random and based on that characters needs.
Scale the difficulty based upon the groups makeup, and let them
choose, easy, medium, hard and have rewards scale up as well.
Items in 3.5 are quite simple, you have base items that can have
special properties, and relics that have several. And further
down the road, i havent seen the epic campaigns yet, but
i am looking forward to them.
Each race gets innate skills based on their hometown that can
improve their skills in certain areas, like I noticed that
Waterdeep had the following skills given to all players:
Artist, Cosmopolitan, Education, Smooth Talking, Thug and Twin
Sword Style.
Artist helped bards with their skills, Cosmopolitan helps enchanters
as well as bards, and education gives bonuses to wizard and sorcerer
types. Smooth Talking helps you barter better prices from merchants
as well as making mobs pay less attention to you. Thug obviously
makes you tougher and twin sword style means even mages can dual
wield innately albeit not proficiently.
These skills as well as ones you can chooose to customize your
character could easily be added to the current system as well
as preserving the current system.
These skills combined open a whole new set of abilities based
on your region of birth, class, race and choices. The pre-requisite
skill system could be used to augment the current system, instead
of replacing it all together like i assume you are attempting.
Lower the effectiveness of the current skill system, and let
players augment themselves as they choose. In ddo, we could
reset our skills once a week, which gives you enough practice
to tweak your skills how you want them.
The introduction of player crafting could also open up a whole
new experience for the players as well. Allowing us to make
original items, with our own strings, choose our stats, which
would require components, and in the expert level, add innate
abilities to these items.
I'll ramble more some other time, its later here and im trying to
get yotus killed. Please give me bad or good feedback on this idea
since i think 2.0 should be a community discussion.