My Wishes for Queen's Wish 2

[Mechalibur]

Since it looks like Queen's Wish 2 is going to be Spiderweb's next game (Kickstarter planned for this Summer!), I wanted to organize my thoughts on stuff I'd like to see for the sequel. Overall, I absolutely adored Queen's Wish - it shook up a lot of the classic Spiderweb formula (for the better imo) which made for a memorable experience. That being said, there were some areas that I felt could use some improvements to help the overall flow of the game. Most of these are assuming the overall gameplay systems are similar (i.e. managing forts and resources).

 

1. Better non-fort equipment. The game had a lot of vassal-based equipment (for example, Ukatish spears and armor) that was frankly inferior to what your forts can produce - even with only a few forts unlocked. This equipment would often have low values for damage/armor and no augment slots when compared to equipment you could get at your blacksmith. Once you got to the end game, there were only a few pieces of equipment that even came close to comparing to what the forts could produce, and it felt like a shame that so much equipment went unused.

 

2. Ranged weapon variety. One of the best parts of QW was the variety of weapon types that characters were offered. You had daggers, swords, halberds, spears, arcane blades, arcane polearms, wands, and staves - all of which felt distinct in what they were capable of doing. Unfortunately, the ranged weapon slot was limited to bows, and there weren't really any choices to be made other than whether or not you wanted to use Fool's Shot instead of the Haven Warbow. More types of ranged weapons, like throwing weapons, crossbows, or arcane bows would be phenomenal for enhancing the variety.

 

3. Two-handed weapon balance. Even though there was a good variety of weapons, the 2-handed ones felt a bit lacking in comparison to their one-handed equivalents. For example, the Folded Steel Blade did about the same damage as the Folded Steel Halberd, whose only real advantage was having a moderate cleave chance. The Folded Steel Blade, however, had an extra augmentation slot, and allowed you to equip an off-hand, which itself would have up to 3 augmentation slots. It would be nice if 2-handers had more augments to compensate or better stats in general.

 

4. Outdoor Encounter cleanup. Most outdoor encounters felt completely useless since they tended not to award anything for completion. Due to the changes in how XP is rewarded, it also meant no experience on top of little to no loot. My preference would be if non-event or non-quest outdoor encounters were just removed entirely. Alternatively, they could low theft chance in the region, representing your efforts to keep the roads secure. Either way, it would be nice if these were cleaned up a bit instead of feeling like drudgery.

 

5. Income Transparency. A lot of the mechanics related to your region income weren't really explained well to the player. For example, taking the Crystal Eye in the Ahriel lands would increase theft chance - the game sort of warns you about this, but it's easy to forget or misinterpret that dialogue. When you get to the actual income report every 2 days, the reasons for your current theft chance aren't detailed - only the total chance. There also doesn't seem to be a way to check your income outside of forts, and I don't believe you can check theft chance outside of the income reports. Some cleanup in this area could really make for a better player experience.

 

6. Character Building. While I like some of the changes with character creation (such as dropping attributes - they really added nothing in Avernum/Avadon since the optimal move was exclusively increasing your primary attribute), in the end the only way of specializing your characters was their skill points and cultural background. A system like the Talents in the Avernum remakes would be a great fit for Queen's Wish and add some extra depth to character building.

 

So those are my biggest items for improvements I'd like to see. I'm incredibly excited to see the next chapter in this series and see how my choices from the previous game carried over!

[TriRodent]

17 hours ago, Mechalibur said:

2. Ranged weapon variety. One of the best parts of QW was the variety of weapon types that characters were offered. You had daggers, swords, halberds, spears, arcane blades, arcane polearms, wands, and staves - all of which felt distinct in what they were capable of doing. Unfortunately, the ranged weapon slot was limited to bows, and there weren't really any choices to be made other than whether or not you wanted to use Fool's Shot instead of the Haven Warbow. More types of ranged weapons, like throwing weapons, crossbows, or arcane bows would be phenomenal for enhancing the variety.

 

My biggest issue with the bows was that they were pretty much the 'only' item in the game that couldn't be augmented, not even the top level bows.  As usually a ranged type of player, it was annoying to be able to improve everything 'but' my main weapon.

 

Variety would be cool but that's mainly esthetics as how powerful 'x' is is determined by how much damage Jeff wants it to deal out.  It really doesn't matter to me if it looks like a bow/crossbow/or some sort of throwing weapon.  (I'm assuming here that the 'skill' trees will be generally the same (divided into combat, magic, etc) and not like in other RPGs where you build up your strength, dex, etc where the type of ranged weapon depends on like in Avernum, your bow or thrown skills)

 

1. No disagreement there.  You're the overseer & should be expected to have good equipment, but that's not to say that the locals shouldn't have developed good items that deal specifically with their situation.

 

3. Agree with the extra augmentation slots.  Perhaps not as many as a similar level sword/shield combo but perhaps 80ish% of those slots.

 

4. Do away with them or have every encounter drop 'something'.  Generally gold but extra supplies (drop perhaps weighted 4:1 for that area's supply item (but you'd have a 1:4 chance of getting a block or two of stone while up in the swamps)) also.  The no xp is fine (as you are supposed to be focused on the strategic level thinking rather than out grinding out a level).  But with no wandering monsters it gives the illusion that things are much more pacified than they really are.

 

5.  No argument there, more info is generally better for planning purposes (to a point to be sure, most players don't want pages of calculations showing how 'x' was decided, but a simple 'these things are impacting your income', especially those things that you can do something about it)

[Mechalibur]

I was never too concerned with ranged weapons not having augments since augment bonuses were universal. In other words, a +4 damage augment on a sword would carry over to your bow's damage as well.

 

Regarding ranged weapon types, I think there is design space for both aesthetic and functional differences. For example, Crossbows could provide a speed penalty, but have larger damage (or armor piercing), while thrown weapons could have a lower range, but better hit and crit.

Edited February 25, 2021 by Mechalibur

[TriRodent]

2 hours ago, Mechalibur said:

I was never too concerned with ranged weapons not having augments since augment bonuses were universal. In other words, a +4 damage augment on a sword would carry over to your bow's damage as well.

It's been a while since I've played QW so I forgot that point.  But even so, even one slot on the top bows would have been appreciated just to think you were doing something.

 

Chatting with Jeff during beta testing at the time, iirc he sort of agreed with me but didn't want to mess with balance issues as things were getting fairly solid/good at that point.

 

So personally, moving forward I'd rather that augments be slightly less powerful but there are slots eventually available in every item category.