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Mazor

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Posts posted by Mazor

  1. After playing all the "classic" Geneforge games (most of which multiple times), and more recently G1: Mutagen, I have had a thought regarding enhancing a mechanic in a way that I find neat, this mechanic is tied to the main theme of the series and the in-game decisions you make.

     

    Potential spoilers ahead for those who have not played G2-5.

     

    Spoiler

    The main theme of the Geneforge series (in my opinion) is the choice between pure raw power and control over one's power.

    On the one hand you have the shapers, who start super-strict regarding their control over their powers and punish severely those who stray towards pure, uncontrolled power.
    On the other hand, you have the rebels who are less strict regarding such considerations, and tend to gravitate towards power (more and more as the series unfold).

    The in-game mechanical representation of this dilemma is already found in the canisters.

    What I suggest is making this in-game decision a core of your character building more profoundly.
    Now, to a small degree, the game already has a mechanic like I had in mind. The more canisters you take, the less control you have over some dialogue options, but the more abilities you have (and the stronger they are).
    I find this implementation problematic because of several reasons:

    1. The trade-off at the moment is between character power and story options and that's it (instead of forms of character power).
    2. The choices aren't very often relevant. Very few dialogue options are affected (except the ending itself), and the decision in character building is mostly "do you want this new spell/creation or not".
    3. The choices don't offer a lot of replay-ability of the game. If you want to cover all your bases, a game of "all-cansiters" and a game of "no-canisters" pretty much covers all of your bases.
    4. You may be barred from some late-game power if you decide to go pure (which may force players into rather harsh min/maxing just to take the "correct" canisters).
    5. Many canisters, even "high powered" ones, are simply irrelevant. Taking the second canister in a late game spell has hardly any effect.

     

    To make the main dilemma of the game affect your character progression in a more significant manner I suggest having an axis which directly represents power vs. control - on one end you have full control, and on the other you have full power.
    When interacting with a canister you either take it and move towards the power side of the axis, or you reject it (maybe destroying it?).

    Now, if this axis is only there to display how many canisters you've used it is pointless (and technically exists currently, but not in a way you can see in game). What I'd like to see is that as you move along the axis, your character's power changes.

     

    The idea is that as you go along the power route your character is stronger and more chaotic.

     

    A possible implementation is adding a perk based advancement for Geneforge, similar maybe to Queen's Wish or other RPG games, but with a twist.
    Each perk, depending on your current point along the axis, may change what it does to a degree that makes sense for that perk (and may, in the future change again if you use more canisters).

     

    Here are a few examples for perks:

    Spell efficiency:

    • Full control - your offensive spells are cheaper to cast (most energy/essence point efficient).
    • Partial power - your offensive spells are more expensive to cast but are also stronger.
    • Full power - your offensive spells are considerably more expensive, drain (may drain) some of your health, and are much stronger (most turn efficient).

    Spell power:

    • Full control - each die rolling 1 with a spell is effectively a 2 (so 1d4 dice rolls  become 2, 2, 3, 4, with expectancy value of 2.75, but low standard deviation).
    • Partial power - gain extra dice when casting spells (say 15% more, 1d4 normal expectancy of 2.5 becomes 2.875).
    • Full power - your offensive spells dice range is increase by 1 (1d4 rolls 1-5, with an expectancy value of 3, but high standard deviation).

    Spell AoE:

    • Full control - your offensive spells area of effect spells do not cause friendly fire.
    • Balanced - your offensive spells area of effect spells do full friendly fire, but cause more damage.
    • Full Power - your offensive area of effect spells area of effect may change their size, but are way more powerful.

     

    Examples for creations' perks:

    Creation control:

    • Full control - your creations are immune/highly resistant to mind control effects.
    • Balanced - your creations have a chance to deal double damage (or other luck based buff, remember, you are not in full control).
    • Full power - your creations are less resistant to mind control effects (or randomly go rogue at times) but have a chance to deal a bunch of extra effects when attacking (each rolled separately) - extra damage, debuffing enemies, draining health, other (the idea is to have them rather chaotic at this point).

    Unstable creations (a perk that replaces what is the result of you creating "unstable creations"):

    • Full control - your unstable creations are turned to "charged" creations. Charged creations are stronger than normal unstable creations, have limited duration (they do not take damage over time, they simply wither after a while, or maybe wane with time) and are more expensive than them.
    • Balanced - your unstable creations are turned to "rogue" creations, rogue creations are stronger than normal unstable creations. Rogue creations will attack anyone near them (friend or foe) after a few turns (at which point they can't be absorbed). Exact amount should be unknown.
    • Full power - your unstable creations are turned to "burning" creations. "Burning" creations are considerably stronger than normal unstable creations, take damage over time, will go rogue after a while (like "rogue" creations above), and explode on death.


    Now, regarding "guardian" perks I'm a bit at a loss, the Guardian approach to shaping has traditionally been - I'm a fighter like any normal human, but I can also shape like a weak Shaper and cast spells like a weak Agent", I've always thought of guardians as able to use their essence to directly enhance their combat prowess (anoint a blade/armor with essence, enhance attacks with energy, etc) but the game did not classically offer such a route.

     

    An alternative to the "axis" method, is having a dual metric system. The more canisters you take, the more "power" metric you gain. The more canisters you reject (destroy), the more "control" metric you gain.
    Perks offer you bonuses based on how much power, and/or how much control you have, but it is a zero sum game as the number of canisters is finite (so if you want to go to extreme power, you can't have high control, and vice versa). The perks may also start to change their effect, other than numerically at certain thresholds of power/control.
    This alternative handles the power curve much more smoothly (canisters are useful all along the game, as you'll probably always want more control/power, as opposed to reaching the point of power-control on a single axis that you want, and staying there), and offers a direct progression to "purists". But it probably limits some perk ideas, and make them harder to balance.
     

    Obviously I am just throwing out ideas as they come to mind, and probably not all of them are balanceable. I also think I've been rather tame when it comes to perks and more wild things can be had.

     

    Regarding the perk system itself and its implementation, that's not really the main point.

    It does not matter how you gain the perks, or even if this is the method in which my suggestion is implemented, instead opting for variance on the active skills themselves (creations/spells/combat abilities) as you move along the power-control axis, or any other method for that matter.

    Also, whether using a canister actually gives you anything other than moving you along the axis is not really important for my suggestion.
     


    I have other ideas for additional mechanics to the game, some of which may interact well with the one I suggested already, but I'd rather not muddy this long post too much anyway.

    Thanks for reading, hoping to hear your opinions.

  2. I would suggest that you make scarab abilities follow the same rules as skill tree abilities for determining which stat contributes to damage dice.

     

    Maybe make scarabs scale with levels instead (with a relevant formula of course)? You get the same scarabs regardless of your character class choice or party choice, and having scarabs that are pretty useless to your composition of choice kinda suck.

     

    This might be hard to balance on some "cross-class skills" such as healing on non healing classes, or ranged abilities on melee fighters, etc.

    On the other hand, a character with 7 ranged AoE attacks doesn't really want to be mostly limited to scarabs that offer similar abilities, therefore you can balance around the idea of people having those "cross-class skills" where applicable.

     

    Another option, easier to balance but more boring, is having scarab drops/rewards/buying options based on your class choice.

  3. Hey guys, I've been happily slaughtering my way up to the third time I was called to the Contested Lands (well, technically I was happily slaughtering things there as well).

     

    Here's the spoilery stuff, so an advanced warning.

     

    Edit: I managed to find him, but if you are interested to see HOW I did that, you'll have to read the entire story :) SPOILERS are still there, and in case I didn't mention earlier SPOILERS.

    Edit 2: The problem is worse than I thought, I am starting to deteriorate. In fact it's so bad that it seems like I forgot everything that happened after level 19, I'm at that level again, the problem isn't solved of course. BTW spoilers ahead.

    Edit 3: At this point it's possible I have saved an old file over a new one, which explains edit #2, it doesn't explain where Odil went (it does make it unsolvable for me I'm afraid :(). Since I don't know how much help I can get at this point, I'll just give a word of warning:

    When you get to handle Consina personally, go do it immediately, explore later! Also, spoilers incoming.

     

     

    Early bird catches the loot and all, I started my happy hunting today being sent to meet a nice old man by the name of Commander Odil, hoping for a good day of slaughtering.

     

    Odil was very polite about it and sent me to scout ahead.

    As the protocol requires from a sneaky spy, I slaughtered every titan I could find (I was really sneaky about it), happily looting any piece of valuable (and less valuable) item they had. Very productive effort I might say.

     

    Met the Scout that wouldn't stop speaking, sadly, I couldn't slaughter him. We parted with me threatening him, his rebellion, and every piece of loot he might have had with slaughtering (don't worry, I was only kidding, I didn't threaten the loot!). A lovely encounter by all means.

     

    Back to Odil I went, as there didn't seem to be any more slaughtering or looting to immediately be had, this seemed to infuriate him (he really should watch his temper at his age, it's unhealthy!) and sent me to aid him in finding something to slaughter.

     

    Off we went with his bunch of merry men (or women, I don't discriminate as long as their happy) and found some titans to slaughter and loot, all in good spirits, since we had so much fun at that time, we thought an after party is due and headed into the rebels fort.

     

    A woman by the name of Constina didn't seem to happy with our sport (I guess she was mad we didn't invite her) and started yelling at poor old Odil about this, the old commander seemed to take it very seriously, which might explain later events, and decided that because she's not nice we'll have to just slaughter all her men (or women, not discriminating at all when it comes to this activity).

     

    Happily counting my gold coins I went back to the commander, who seemed to be a bit uplifted by our last endeavor, and he asked me to go down and check if the woman decided to go downstairs due to all the noise.

     

    Being the curious fellow that I am, I decided to first go around and scout a bit, after all commander Odil DID send me scouting earlier, and there might be more things to slaughter and loot, right?

     

    Some wolves and pelts later, I found a southern exit from the zone and thought to myself that I might as well "tag" it while there, so I did.

     

    Finally, after the map showed that there is no other spots for sneaky loot to hide from me, I went down to have a conversation with that rude lady. On the way there I passed by the fort, but not a soul was there, naturally thinking they all went for a short tea break while I was scouting around.

     

    Down the rabbit hole, a few more NPCs slaughtered, a few more loot pieces looted, and I met the shouting lady Constina. She didn't seem happy to see me, which is understandable after her being so rude to my dear old friend Odil, and she expressed it by being rather uncivil. So we started to argue.

    It seems I was more compelling and managed to win that argument, excited to tell Odil the good news I went to find my friend, maybe he saved some biscuits for me?

     

    Searched for him in the rebel fort, but he wasn't there anymore.

    Thought it's a good idea looking for him back in his fort, after all even with all the fun we had that day he was still the commander, and without him his soldiers wouldn't know what to slaughter and whom to loot (or the other way around, I'm always confused about such things). But he wasn't there either.

     

    Well, maybe he decided to be playful and hide in the hideout where I met him earlier, but not there either I'm afraid.

     

    After a few more rounds in The Titan Lands I still couldn't find my dear friend, nor anything to loot or slaughter, this had me worried so I went back to Avadon and speak with Heart Probus about this, a man Odil's age disappearing is some cause to be alarmed, he might have be going senile!

    Probus, pretended not to know a thing about the incident, telling me to go find Odil and play with him a bit in The Titan Lands (the same thing he told me earlier in the day), I'm certain he was just faking it so to not hurt Odil losing his memory like this.

     

     

    At this point though, I'm rather worried about the old man, I don't know where he might have gone and I am afraid he might be sitting somewhere cold and lonely, probably hungry to. Can you kids help me find my friend?

     

     

    Edit: I found my friend!

    It appears the Odil was hiding in his fort really really well since I couldn't find him the first time there. He must have gotten bored of the game, or forgot we were playing (the silly lad) as when I came back after dinner he was sitting there happy to see me.

    (Quitting and restarting the game solved it).

     

     

     

     

     

     

    If it matters, I have the Steam version.

     

    Yours truly,

    Mazor.

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