Things you would like to see in Geneforge 5

[Randomizer]

Since Geneforge 4 is about to be released we might as well start with what we want in the next installment. Beta testers have an unfair advantage since we already know what has been changed since Geneforge 3.

 

1) Male and female versions of the characters, please. I know this has been a complaint since Geneforge 1.

 

2) More slots to carry items in the backpack. You'll understand when you see how many items you'll carry around now that items in the backpack don't count towards encumberance.

 

3) A tougher expert dungeon for the end of the game. This one is hard, but doable if you are prepared. I need to see if Jeff fixed the glitch that lets you repeat the fight with the boss monster to get its dropped loot more than once (return of the infinite Chesh bug from Geneforge 1 with better treasure).

[Student of Trinity]

I kind of like the gender-limited PC graphics. The Geneforge tradition is to have male and female balance, with the odd numbered figure hooded and robed so it makes no difference. That seems somehow elegant.

 

There needs to be some limitation on how much you can carry, otherwise (a) it's ridiculous, and ( it actually gets tedious carrying around dozens of equipment items that are overall inferior, but that each confer one particular benefit, on the off chance that at some point you might want that little extra buff. In the current system I often do find myself wanting three or six more slots, but I'm pretty sure that would always happen, with any finite-sized backpack. I'll be happy to let the current system ride for the next game at least.

 

Hard but doable if well-prepared seems quite fine to me for the Inner Crypt area. I don't really want an impossible challenge in the game. My three testing parties have had widely differing levels of difficulty with different parts of the game, despite being on the same difficulty setting, and the last fight (which only two of the three have tried yet) is no exception. I'm pretty sure that there will be builds and strategies that make the final game relatively easy for some classes, but I'm not sure that's a terrible problem. At any rate I think it's an inevitable problem, given Jeff's business constraints, and the only way it could be eliminated from G5 would be dumb luck.

 

Mainly I'd like for G5 to maintain the new standard of sophistication set by G4. Oh, I could live with the variation of having G5 be more of a slugfest, but it would have to somehow be a sophisticated slugfest. Beyond this, I would like more emphasis on genuine strategy, and subtler and more obscure options, that you can't find without some real thinking. G4 initiates both of these, to the limited extent that I think Jeff's business model can tolerate innovation per game. It would be nice if G5 could develop further in these directions.

[MagmaDragoon]

Hmm. Before saying anything, I would like to see GF4.

[Sudanna]

This topic is a bit premature, since some of the requests of non-betatesters have probably been filled already. -X- would like you to wait at least until the Macintosh version comes out.

[Archaeolagent]

Quote:

Originally written by Randomizer:
This one is hard, but doable if you are prepared.

This is true of almost any level of difficulty you can find in a turn-based game, though. It's particularly inevitable in Jeff's games not directly because of the business model but because his games are sidequest-heavy. On the other hand, the difficulty level setting is an unusual feature that helps a lot. Torment is usually challenging -- at least until you break the system by making seven levelled-up Vlish or whatever.

In any game, if you are an experienced player adept at finding ways to turn the rules to your advantage, the only way to continue being challenged is to impose your own outside restrictions on what you can do. Hence the "single character challenges" and "low level challenges" that float around the net for console RPGs. Try playing any Geneforge as a Shaper-type who doesn't shape. Or try playing with stealth and avoiding *all* XP, not just from combat, only completing the quests that are absolutely necessary to continue the storyline. That could be very difficult.

[Lilith]

Quote:

Originally written by Artequila:
Or try playing with stealth and avoiding *all* XP, not just from combat, only completing the quests that are absolutely necessary to continue the storyline. That could be very difficult.

X did this in GF1 and finished at level 5. Pretty impressive, really. (Of course, the ending he got for his trouble kinda sucked.)

[Delicious Vlish]

I'd like to have a Vlish as the player character.

 

And maybe some hidden messages or hidden jokes about human appendage pr0n.

[Nioca]

A sort of flame-thrower style spell. Basically, it blankets the area between you and your targeted enemy with flame/ice/insert-damage-type-here in a inversed cone pattern, damaging everything in-between (including the target). Sort of like this:

 

Code:

X - Affected AreaP - PCT - Target XXXTXXX  XXXXX   XXX    X    P

The target would take severe damage, but everything in the affected area would also take damage. It's probably too complicated to implement, though. One can always dream!

[Pyro]

4 words: more scantily clad women

 

thank you please continue...

[Randomizer]

Another idea would be a Nethergate style game where you could start as one of the three Shaper types (shaper, guardian, or agent) or as a Rebel (warrior, infiltrator, servile, lifecrafter, or shock trooper) and have differing but intersecting missions.

 

I did start with the pacifist game where my character refused to kill anything himself or take the kill dialog option. I got through about 20 areas of the 81 before I had to test something else. You get a lot of money selling off almost every weapon and crystal. I will try it again sometime. I think I want something better than a fyora to assist me.

[Slippery Salomon]

Not having seen G4 I feel somewhat at a disadvantage, as things I may like to see in 5 may already exist in 4.

 

In G1 I liked the in-town feeling of each section. This was largely gone by G3, and it would nice to have it back. I also miss outdoor adventuring, but that was never in Geneforge. As far as advances that I predict we'll see in G4 are the idea of antagonists using cover to their advantage. That would be nice to see, as the current, stupid, approach takes me a bit out of the game.

[Student of Trinity]

What do you mean by 'in-town feeling'? To me in G1, most zones felt really isolated from the other ones. I imagined a rather long path connecting them. This worked very well with the atmosphere of exploring an island that was practically one huge sealed tomb. Everything was supposed to be isolated and static, and you were coming along to dig it up. It made most zones feel sort of cosy and quiet; you had all the time in the world for each zone, and nothing else mattered while you were there.

 

In the later games, you were not supposed to forget at any point that there were all these factions working furiously elsewhere. This didn't always work so well, but it eliminated the cosiness.

 

Maybe it would be cool if in G5 you could start out with a static, isolated, cosy situation, and then after a while, you could do something that would make everything accelerate dramatically. That would be cool. Realistically, though, this would have to mean that the quiet times only lasted through part of the demo area, and that would not be much of the game.

 

About using cover: an interesting idea. There is no cover in Geneforge, in the sense of being able to shoot from a spot where most of your body is protected or concealed. But it might be quite possible to add that. Even making a few of the A4 arrow slits would be interesting in some places. What you used to be able to do was abuse doors and corners in ridiculous ways to slaughter enemies without retaliation. You'll see soon what G4 has done about these.

 

You can always use walls and corners to sneak up on enemies and attack them suddenly from short range. The Geneforge AI is not smart enough for your enemies to do this in any deliberate way, but when there are enough of them hunting you, some of them will do this accidentally anyway, and the effect is pretty much there. You can go a long way with this sort of fake AI, actually.

[Randomizer]

The Geneforge AI has changed in that even with a shaper type with 6 creations and the shaper not attacking the AI will hunt you down. You can think that you are safe around the corner doing nothing and get attacked. It doesn't seem to matter if you have more creations than the enemy as I once thought. You can't count on avoiding damage if you didn't attack.

 

I found another glitch to annoy Jeff as he rushes to finish. Killing something off that wasn't supposed to die sure messes up the game. I'm not talking about killing NPCs with dialog options that you need this time. Just something I found by accident.

[Sudanna]

But the one thing that -X- would like in Geneforge 5 is pole weapons. Yes, pole weapons. And bows, too.

 

Other than that, have at it.

[Alberich]

Well, in any CRPG, if the designer is going to put extra time and energy into improving it, I want most of that time and energy spent on stories and interesting characters. I already made my suggestion about a lightly "customized" game based on the way you played past games (to create an illusion, if not much reality, that your past characters affected the current game).

 

The "Nethergate" idea is intriguing - once the scare value of the Drakons has worn off, maybe you get a Drakon hatchling option. In that role, you have to deal not only with the Shapers, who will never grant you peace 'til all your friends are re-enslaved, but with that new breed of ur-shaper-critters, who want to do pretty well the same thing from above and are outstripping you...

 

That said, I would like to see the series reach its end before many more sequels come out. Not that I don't love it, but some aspects of the game are as depressing as real politics (and war) can be...and it would be nice to have an at-long-last finish to the war. One where the player gets a broad range of really stark choices...e.g....

 

- The obvious ones; the player helps one side vanquish the other, and becomes a power in the resulting empire.

 

- The equally obvious one; the player wipes out the Shapers and the Drakons both, and creates a new order himself.

 

- "Nice Guys Finish First for a %$#@! change" - The chief Drakon pays you a fortune to re-engineer him with greater powers; but you figure out how to use the same process to change his personality at the same time. He and the future drakons he spawns don't have that anti-human pround and mean streak, and they are able to make a peace treaty that works (because they're still the stronger half).

 

- The "preachy pacifist" ending - the player tires of it all, sneaks off to an island, and lives in peace while the two sides of the rebellion scorch the earth and kill each other, down to the last two guys, who are stabbed by palace eunuchs or the GF equivalent. Said PC then ruminates on the futility of war and starts a commune, that, in a twist of irony, grows into a...naah.

 

- "War of the Roses" - the PC uses his advanced Shaping skills, or allies, to create humans that can intermarry with drakons; after a generation of forced marriages (Shapers and Takers are equally totalitarian), the combined race goes on to rule the world in a shaper-like way, but with more restraint based on the awful past.

 

- Beneath the Planet of the Apes, but with a "gene bomb" or "germ bomb" and maybe an Omega Man aftermath...or perhaps the world, cleared of humans and drakons, is populated by an especially intelligent but extremely pacifistic strain of Ornks. (I'd say, "And the Ornks had this planned all along," but that would be silly!)

 

- The same, but the player was clever enough to hide in a germ-safe bunker with his new mini-Drakon mistress (or the sex-reversed equivalent)...the two then go forth to repopulate the world. (If that seems a little weird - naaah! - the PC could instead be able to invite a mix of NPC's to enter the bunker with him, and according to what they are like, the world turns out differently...killing/inviting the right choices makes a better world).

 

Of course, stark choices like this might strain the idea of "postwar sequels" (okay, the rebellion is over; now for the next challenge...). But I'm sure the designers have plenty of other ideas to delight us.

[Nioca]

Quote:

Originally written by -X-:
But the one thing that -X- would like in Geneforge 5 is pole weapons. Yes, pole weapons. And bows, too.

Pole weapons sound neat, but not bows. I honestly don't want to see a bow in Geneforge. The thorn batons are good enough.

[Sudanna]

True, but a baton just doesn't have the dramatic effect of a bow. -X- also wonders what goes on in that tiny little baton-brain too much for his own good.

[Nioca]

Quote:

Originally written by -X-:
True, but a baton just doesn't have the dramatic effect of a bow. -X- also wonders what goes on in that tiny little baton-brain too much for his own good.

To my knowledge, batons don't have brains. Besides, batons are the equivalent of modern-day firearms.

[Lattan]

Quote:

Originally written by Nioca:
To my knowledge, batons don't have brains. Besides, batons are the equivalent of modern-day firearms.

Well, you do have to coax them into mating...

[Nioca]

Actually, now that I think about it, there was a spot in GF2 where you could repair a Submission Baton. However, if your tool use wasn't high enough, you simply made it squeak with displeasure.

[Lattan]

Quote:

Originally written by Nioca:
Actually, now that I think about it, there was a spot in GF2 where you could repair a Submission Baton. However, if your tool use wasn't high enough, you simply made it squeak with displeasure.

That was in G1. Or at least there's a place in G1 where you can repair a submission baton.

[Nioca]

I get my genes mixed up sometimes.

[Randomizer]

Quote:

Originally written by -X-:
-X- also wonders what goes on in that tiny little baton-brain too much for his own good.

-X- won't like some of Geneforge 4 where the minor creations get to "voice" their opinions. If they could get him alone in a dark alley they would get their revenge.

[Nioca]

Are you toying with us again, or are you being serious?

[Delicious Vlish]

I doubt batons really have much in the way of "brains."

 

Why?

 

Because if you tried to fire them at certain creations adept at mind control, they could seize up the baton and cause it to misfire.

[Archaeolagent]

Dominatrish

[Randomizer]

Quote:

Originally written by Nioca:
Are you toying with us again, or are you being serious?

Jeff gives some hints that are views about creations aren't exactly what we thought. When Jeff releases the game I'll post some quotes that most people won't get to see for a few days to weeks depending upon what they decide to do in the game. One of them was my favorite for the whole game and another might make Emperor Tullegolar rethink his views about the Geneforge.

[Andraste]

I would like to see the Minor Heal and Curing graphics switched. I always get them mixed up. The bandages just make more sense as a healing spell.

[Student of Trinity]

Quote:

Originally written by Artequila:
Dominatrish

Submission vlish.

[Alberich]

Quote:

quote:
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Originally written by Artequila:
Dominatrish
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Originally written by Student of Trinity:
Submission vlish.

Radiovlish appear!

[Archaeolagent]

Quote:

Originally written by Andraste:
I would like to see the Minor Heal and Curing graphics switched. I always get them mixed up. The bandages just make more sense as a healing spell.

The same images for Healing and Curing spells have been used for so many different spells between Nethergate, four Avernum games and now four Geneforge games that they are just messed up in my head. Personally, I'd like to see new healing and curing images that don't constantly get switched around. Otherwise, the images are just confusing.

[Shaper Anton]

create survile

[Randomizer]

Dispell confusion.

 

I don't bother to remember the graphics, I just try to avoid hitting the wrong key since I prefer the keyboard for spells..

[Ijuuin Enzan]

Somewhere to act as storage for all my things, illbegotten or otherwise. Even a shack would do, just somewhere that I can leave items safely.

[Drakefyre]

You can leave items safely anywhere you want.

[MagmaDragoon]

Just be aware that there is an item limit for each area. Hey, this will be also in GF4?

[Lattan]

Quote:

Originally written by Guardian Magma:
Just be aware that there is an item limit for each area. Hey, this will be also in GF4?

Are you sure there's an area limit? I think there's actually just a limit to the number of things you can put in each block.

[Andraste]

I'd like to have the quick save and open quick save hot keys not right next to each other. That has lead to much suffering.

[MagmaDragoon]

Quote:

Originally written by SNM:

Quote:

Originally written by Guardian Magma:
Just be aware that there is an item limit for each area. Hey, this will be also in GF4?

Are you sure there's an area limit? I think there's actually just a limit to the number of things you can put in each block.

Well, in GF2 I usually putting all scattered on ground, but at some point I see a message like: "I cannot doing this" or such.

[Synergy]

If there is an on the ground item limit in G4, I didn't find it. I did amass quite a pile of stuff I'd leave in a convenient location in a particular town. It might be true that you'll hit a limit in one tile, but I was dropping stuff in a general area by a town gate, and it likely wasn't all in just one tile space.

 

It's certainly nice (and nonsensical) that there are no thieves in the towns, and I can leave the most humongous valuable stash o' stuff anywhere and it will always be there waiting for me when I return.

 

-S- is for don't Steal my Stash.

[Archaeolagent]

Synergy, that -S- gimmick lost its panache a looooong time ago...

[Synergy]

Eh, is there any gimmick that doesn't? I think mine's run about a month, but let it not be said that I am immune to criticism.

 

-S-

 

EDIT: Hey! What the--

 

My Synergy nick is now "reserved" by another member? I can't get it back. Is this a UBB bug or did someone actually take it?

[Alorael at Large]

The "other member" may be you. The UBB is very bad at releasing used monikers, and it's especially bad at releasing them to the account that used them in the first place. Don't try to understand it.

 

—Alorael, whose gimmick isn't stale. It's just hardened and toughened by years of good use, and he'll hear no suggestions to the contrary.

[Dikiyoba]

It's a bug. Keep your current nickname for a while and then try again. It might give it back to you then.

 

Edit: Alorael got in before Dikiyoba.

[Synergy]

Quote:

Originally written by Justication:
The "other member" may be you.

I am beside myself at having become my own worst enemy. :[

-S-

P.S. I wonder how many scores of monikers to which you've now burned the bridge, Alorael? Maybe there is no going home again once you venture out from the safety of your original moniker. Though, come to think of it, I began my visitations here under my present remoniker, so if you wait up to a year or more, evidently one's original title may be regurgitated for recycling.

[Alorael at Large]

I believe your login name is always available to you and never available to anyone else. It's only the variations that are more difficult.

 

—Alorael, who is unfazed by this fact. He never looks back in his moniker changes.

[MagmaDragoon]

This sound like a "Justi(fi)cation". Is this related to your moniker?

 

EDIT: Actually no, you posted this after the change. >_<

[Redhawk]

Unlimited Inventory, or at least, a lot more slots with all like items occupying a single slot. For example, 5 suits of the same armor occupy one slot. Something like the magic bags in Neverwinter Nights where you can dump items in them and they become weightless, and with enough bags you can carry a warehouse on your back. Better yet, do away with encumbrance by weight altogether.

 

One of the principle frustrations of most RPG games is dealing with the huge number of items you end up acquiring. Inventory management is as fun as, well, inventory management. I am signing on to play a game, not practice accounting, and I don't care whether something is "realistic" or not, just simple. A magic backpack with unlimited storage capacity is as "realistic" in a fantasy world as anything else. Managing a huge hoard of items is tedious and detracts from game play.

 

Along similar lines I don't want to have to save a copy of evey teapot, plate and kitchen knife because it might be necessary to fulfill a quest. Make quests action-oriented, not item-oriented, unless it's a special item you have to do something special to get.

 

Finally (and I forget whether this is already a feature in Geneforge or not) would be the ability to equip NPCs with armor and weapons of your choice, and/or use them or your creations as pack mules.

 

Anyway, looking forward to Geneforge 4 as this really is one of the best RPGs out there. Keep up the good work!

[Randomizer]

Jeff revised the encumberance system as he announced so all items in the backpack and quick item slots don't count for weight. There still aren't enough slots in the pack so you have to decide between carrying what you think you will need and making lots of trips to bring back loot (as I''m making my third trip back for more).

 

He also increased the number of items you want to keep with you so get selective.

[Alorael at Large]

There's a reason for limited backpacks. Not being able to carry literally everything you could conceivably need and still be able to carry out all the loot you acquire means you need to make strategy decisions. The game is slightly better for it.

 

—Alorael, who finds the game vastly better for the revamped encumberance system. It's now possible to play a frail caster or shaper without collapsing under the weight of anything valuable you pick up.