Let's Brainstorm how to make post-Dreadfell more fun!

[jenx]

i think any runthrough to a winner, that requires use of the far portal, tells us that the game design could be improved.

So i'd like the more radical suggestion of disabling the farportal altogether. Then, we'd get a better idea of distribution of xp, artifacts, bosses etc.

i like all the ideas posted so far, events, side quests, etc.

what the game lacks, except perhaps for that large square vault with the mountain (?) on the right hand side which requires opening and closing sliders and doors correctly to get in, is puzzles/riddles/problem solving. I'd love to see some of this added in.

Also, the quests are mostly one-dimensional - collect this, help that, find such and such. better to have more complex quests, with alternative paths, randomised paths, unpredictable rewards, etc.

so what i'd like to see is not shorter dungeons or more/harder bosses, that is quantitative changes, but rather qualitative changes, so complexity, branching, storyline randonmess/alternatives, problem solving.

This greatly helps replayability.

just my two bobs worth, whoever bob is !

[jenx]

Another issue i see, is that of all the artifacts I collect, sooooo many are just no use. Especially once you get the ingame artifacts you are looking for.

For example, there is sooo much fun in combining three weapons for mindslayers, but once you get the two tridents, there is nothing that even comes close to beating it. so you suddenly pay no attention whatsoever to weapon drops or stats.

So I think the power of late game t5 randarts needs to be boosted further again.

what i also enjoy very much, is when you get a range of effects, talents on weapons and other equipment, as this makes a huge number of possibilities open up, and that sort of openendedness makes it enjoyable. so I'd favour adding an extra talent/effect to all gear. but that might unbalance things LOL

[Isotope-X]

I love the idea of class/metaclass quests and/or racial quests. I could see racial quests involving a chance to interact with other races in various ways...perhaps you could engineer a truce between the yeek and halflings, or lead the Thalore armies to finally purge the Shalore, or get your revenge on the leader of the Necromancer who imprisoned you at the beginning of your game as a ghoul. Right now "race" means starting zone and a few talents, and I know that was an intentional choice, but I think there's room for growth.

[twas Brillig]

So I think the power of late game t5 randarts needs to be boosted further again.

Wouldn't that just lead to runs being even more gear/luck dependent? Either you buff T5 encounters to match the increased power level (so you need to find a competitive T5 to not die) or you don't (and then the game just gets easier).

I'd like to make travel back and forth from the east and west easier once you have the farportal established. Maybe a secondary portal in the fortress (so you have one for east, one for west).

It always kind of bugged me that you can make a portal for Melinda to arbitrary parts of Maj'eyal, but you can't go through them yourself. So the quest to make a Farportal from the East just feels very silly whenever you take a breather in your fortress.

[HousePet]

Its okay, enemies get the buffed items too.

[Dracos]

Well, I'll add in another voice here

I tend to find the high point taking out the Room of Doom and finishing up the East. What I often find is I'll do that and the volcano run, and have 2-3 Orc Prides to go with almost no reason to stop between them. So suddenly, the game becomes a slog because I'm doing nothing but orc dungeon->orc dungeon->Orc dungeon->slime tunnel->Long high peak.

So separate from the good suggestions on slicing the individual ones down or improving their experience, that seems to be the bigger flow issue with end game. Suddenly, there's no reason to take a break, talk with anyone in town, set anything up, or otherwise once the volcano is done. You may do some farportal grinding, but that's usually not something that helps the dungeondungeondungeon vibe.

Flow wise, that stuff could stand to get broken up. Ideally, there should be 'something' worth doing between every pride. You should never find it the best route to do two prides in a row. Really, the paladin town could use a lot here, and a lot of the empty map has room for stuff.

Slime tunnel could stand to not be 'part' of a pride. It discourages taking a break and doing anything if you are right there after killing the last pride. It also forces that pride as the last one order wise. It'd be great for the NPCs if they could be discovering that, and revealing a new map spot when the orcs are down.

The Gem quest is one that probably should be non-missable, and naturally show up in the latter mix, as an opportunity to break up the flow of Orc crushing.

Just a few basics on this turn this into:
Finish Volcano (+ east) -> Do pride -> <Do something else> -> Do pride -> <do something else and go back to town, proceeding hunting quest, maybe gem quest> -> Do Pride -> <Go back to town and find out about slime tunnel> -> <head to slime tunnel on map> -> Do high peak.

That'd help keep it as 'part of the game' instead of 'the mandatory wall for victory'.

Admittingly, the whole slime tunnel thing hurts there too. Without it, folks could just GO when they felt they wanted to try to finish. As it is, you have to kill all the orc prides, because you can't start end game without it. A lot of JRPGs take the angle "Here's our obvious Final End Game run ...and here's a bunch of stuff you can do if you want, betters the game, but doesn't need to be done to go 'win' if that's where you're at".

[edge2054]

Added one of Davion Fuxa's zone threads to the OP. If anyone has old zone ideas laying around or knows of any to contribute that would be great

[edge2054]

Some ideas for orc patrols.

Clearing a pride could lower the patrol rate. Uniques could spawn in patrols, killing them could lower spawn rates.

Could have a quest to rescue a company of Sun Paladins, increasing Sun Paladin patrol rate.

[Atarlost]

Some ideas for orc patrols.

Clearing a pride could lower the patrol rate. Uniques could spawn in patrols, killing them could lower spawn rates.

Could have a quest to rescue a company of Sun Paladins, increasing Sun Paladin patrol rate.

Uniques in patrols would make them even more dangerous. The commonly cited problem with orc patrols is that they're tedious to avoid and may kill you. If they had uniques they'd still be tedious to avoid and would be even more likely to kill you.

To fix the "likely to kill you" maybe switch them to a goblin graveyard sized map? That would give more scope to avoid the enemies and you'd be less likely to plop down in LoS of all of them.

[edge2054]

I'm aware and yes we would probably adjust for it.

[twas Brillig]

Can't patrols already sometimes spawn with uniques? I've definitely seen Kra'Tor show up in one. Although thinking about it, I'm not sure I can remember any other orc uniques. Personally I think uniques are at least a little more fun than rares, so getting more uniques to fill out the prides might be helpful on its own--though obviously that has some implications for difficulty. Rak'Shor has some unique undead (like the Rotting Titan), not to mention weaker undead that aren't found anywhere else. I wonder if that same idea could be used to make the other prides at least a little more distinct?

[Zonk]

Some ideas for orc patrols.

Clearing a pride could lower the patrol rate. Uniques could spawn in patrols, killing them could lower spawn rates.

Wait, what. I thought that was already the case and it had been like that for a LOOOONG time?
If it doesn't work like that, it definetely should. And not just in number, but composition - if you destroy the wilder orc pride, there should be no/less wilder orcs in patrols, for example.

[grayswandir]

Specifically, I'd want any patrol uniques to have an associated artifact that they have a 25% chance of dropping, as an incentive to actually fight them.

To make them easier: How about we let the player always leave an area, even with status effects, if that area has no way to get back to it?