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Forum » Very Impressed, a Few Questions

Very Impressed, a Few Questions

Death Knight 12 years ago
Hi, i just pre-ordered your game driftmoon as i find it to be a very good game. I also played a few of your other games (Magebane 2 and Notrium) as well. I have to say i like your style of topdown view and i find those games mentioned to be good. I have a few questions (and a few wants) from your games.

Driftmoon is a very cool game and it reminds me of a little bit of baldurs gate 2 (as magebane does as well. I was going to ask if the attributes are going to stay the way they are as they are now? I think that since dexterity and agility are very similar, one gives movement speed and another attack speed, might want to have something give critical hit chance or something. Maybe intelligence. This is just a thought that came to mind. I like the attributes though i will say.

Aside from that, the talent system is where its at. Its basically a baldurs gate version of fallout with the perk system and from what ive seen, it works really well.

Magebane 2 is an excellent game and i think that it is great just how it is.

Now onto notrium. I tried getting into this game and i really liked the concept and the survival aspect. No other survival game was like it that i played in my life. The only problem that i found was that the season of night and day, and rain and clear weather was a bit too fast for me. What i really think would be awesome for this game in the future would be if you were to add a few roleplaying elements of other games into it. Notrium has a pretty interesting concept and with roleplaying elements added, it would be even better.

These are just thoughts keep in mind. Keep up the good work
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ville 12 years ago
Thanks Death Knight, and glad to hear you've liked our/my games!

I'm open to suggestions relating to the stats system in Driftmoon - it isn't perfectly balanced yet, so there's still time to change it. It's a fairly traditional system, and could use some Driftmooning, if we come up with a great idea. But otherwise I'm happy with it - it increases your powers, which is the main point.

I do have plans for a Notrium sequel. As we'd likely use the Driftmoon engine, there would be some RPG elements right from the start, such as experience and talents/skills. The difficult part would be the item creation system. Now that Minecraft is out, there are a ton of clones with item crafting similar to Notrium - we'd have to think of something original, or leave it out.
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Death Knight 12 years ago
I was actually going to ask you if you were going to put some sort of bonus that relates to chance for a critical hit. Im not sure if you've played depths of peril by Soldak entertainment (an indie action/rpg) but they did it pretty well in depths of peril where warriors got a bonus chance to cause a critical with intelligence. I dont know if you have a critical hit chance in the game yet, but that would be awesome if you did as it would really fit the fallout type feel to the game.

By the way, is each weapon different with regards to attacks that you get? I noticed that fists get punch, slam, and swat. Do different weapons get different attacks?
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Death Knight 12 years ago
Ok im level 4 now and i was wondering if it would be possible for a few things in the future-

1)Dexterity, agility and intelligence are mutually ok, but they could be great if they have other perks to them. Dexterity could add to missile damage, agility could give a very small chance to dodge/block as you are moving extremely fast, and intelligence could give a small chance for a critical success in combat.

I feel that dexterity and agility while sounding great, do very little for the main character unless you pump them very very high. Compare them to strength and constitution, where there is no comparison.

2)The talent system is great but it would be great if there were more perks to choose from, and levels/specializations of perks. For example you could add a perk that is like cursed blood (strength add) but instead adds to dexterity/ agility or intelligence that way there is more to choose from. You could also specialize in a perk/talent up to 3 times (fallout?)

Keep in mind, these are only thoughts and i am only level 4. I have no idea what other things are in the full game when finished so all of this could be in there. I am just interested as this game is very fun. Thanks.
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ville 12 years ago
Judging by the punch, slam and swat, it sounds to me like you're playing the preview version from 2009. Since you have preordered, you might want to download the latest version - you're in for a real treat! And there's a new one coming out in a few weeks (we hope).

Your comment for dexterity and agility is still very valid though, they haven't changed at all in the last couple of years. If anyone has ideas on how to beef them up, maybe make them more important, or add more things they control, I'm eager to hear your ideas!
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MageKing17 12 years ago
ville said:
Your comment for dexterity and agility is still very valid though, they haven't changed at all in the last couple of years. If anyone has ideas on how to beef them up, maybe make them more important, or add more things they control, I'm eager to hear your ideas!
Perhaps a high dexterity could decrease the recharge time on combat skills.
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Pete 12 years ago
Is there blocking? I cant remember - but if there is, less of a decrease in movement speed while blocking?
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Death Knight 12 years ago
I just got the newest version and yes, the feats are pretty damn good. My only question is that from the 2009 release, i notice a big change. Someone mentioned a recharge time on combat skills. A few more questions. I noticed that in each row of perks or talents there is a non-combative perk such as the observant one at level 2. I like perks and talents like those because they not only make the game more interesting but they do it in a different way and play a different way. If possible, there could be a few feats/talents that might relate a bit to the outdoorsman side of the game, kind of like Notrium. Maybe a food management/gathering skill that allows you to use less food to heal and thus you can stay out in the wild longer. And you could even master that perk with a cool ability of maybe allowing the user to gain short buffs with food that normal characters dont receive. It would make sense as most of those guys that stay out in the wild can eat things that most of us couldnt dream of with little effort. I dont know, just an idea as i like the outdoorsman side of the game


Edit-I just noticed the outdoors side of the skill tree, dont know how i missed it.


Edited 12 years ago
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Death Knight 12 years ago
I just thought of something cool. Would it be possible if there was a 4th tree of talents where it revolves around curses and blessings. You could gain a blessing when you do certain things. For example-When you hit an enemy you get a blessing that lasts3-5 seconds. And then higher up, you get a long blessing that happens when you get a critical hit. Or maybe a blessing when you get hit by an enemy. This would be cool as you can use this for characters that dont want to focus on the left side tree of area of effects and just want to get something that will enhance their regular attacks as a buff, or maybe even debuffs too.

Edited 12 years ago
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ville 12 years ago
Death Knight said:
I just thought of something cool. Would it be possible if there was a 4th tree of talents where it revolves around curses and blessings. You could gain a blessing when you do certain things. For example-When you hit an enemy you get a blessing that lasts3-5 seconds. And then higher up, you get a long blessing that happens when you get a critical hit. Or maybe a blessing when you get hit by an enemy. This would be cool as you can use this for characters that dont want to focus on the left side tree of area of effects and just want to get something that will enhance their regular attacks as a buff, or maybe even debuffs too.

That's not a bad idea. I'm going to keep it in mind if we still decide to update the talent trees.

Currently dexterity isn't actually much different from strength, they both affect how much damage you can do, dexterity makes you hit faster, and strength makes you hit harder. So dexterity is something I might beef up.
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Death Knight 12 years ago
Well so far the cool thing about the trees is that you cant be too much of a jack of all trades. So while you can go all the way with one tree and a bit on another, you cant do half with one and half with another. Thats a good thing because there's nothing worse than when you have munchkinized characters that are so powerful that everyone goes that way. With the way you did it, i can go almost all the right tree and then get 3 levels with the middle tree for the stun/retreat ability, or just the same with the left side and the aoe's.

The cool thing if you did add another tree would be that there's more you can do and thus more character types.
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Death Knight 12 years ago
I hope no one minds me posting my characters to learn more about the game's system. Im now lvl5 on char 1 and lvl4 on char 2 and i am starting to get a better feel for the attributes and skills driftmoon has.

Strength-Strength is usually really good if you want to maximize damage through one hit moves. If you use strength you probably will want to almost forget about dex as dex is more with damage over time or dps. Boosting both is not as useful as you get less benefit and plus you get 1 skill point per level anyway.

Dexterity-Dexterity is just like strength, good if you focus mostly on regular attacking. With a high dex i find my char gets in just as much damage as if i had a strength of the same level. In a way, it might even be more as speed is king. This is good if you dont go for the aoe attacks and just focus on lots of attacks, lot of criticals (right talent tree).

Agility-This is a good skill if you make the 2nd character im currently working on. Instead of focusing on lots of speed in combat or lots of force, this char focuses on agility primarily, and a bit of strength to get a few nice strikes in there. With a high agility, you can use retreat like no other character can. Rush into combat, activate retreat, pick off 1 or 2 enemies and get the heck out of there. With a high agility, you can essentially pick your fights and eventually im guessing can maximize in hit and run attacks.

Constitution-Well..this is where stats dont have much going. Ive made a few characters off of constitution and all had to be restarted. Roughly, constitution gives you 2 health points per point which is really not worth what your getting. As characters dont gain health per level, this might be useful if the higher your constitution skill is the higher hp per level gained is. I dont know, im not sure about this stat.

Intelligence-I finally think that intelligence might be really good. I just havent put much emphasis on it. I can see it helping if you add a point in the beginning but i think that if you really want to work the game, set all points to intelligence at beginning and watch how your character reaches lvl 3 before the 2nd area is given!

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MageKing17 12 years ago
Death Knight said:
Intelligence-I finally think that intelligence might be really good. I just havent put much emphasis on it. I can see it helping if you add a point in the beginning but i think that if you really want to work the game, set all points to intelligence at beginning and watch how your character reaches lvl 3 before the 2nd area is given!
I put all points into intelligence in my current character, and I definitely get a lot of experience from simple actions like picking up silver feathers (picking up my... 16th? silver feather resulted in 155 experience or something). However, after my intelligence hit 10, I decided I should probably start beefing up my damage, and starting boosting Strength and Dexterity; I decided to bump up both to see which improvements gave more DPS, but didn't really notice much difference either way. On the other hand, they were each only at 3 when I hit the end of the preview.

You know, I'm the kind of person who always focuses on getting more "improvement points", of whatever variety, faster than anyone else can. In Space Empires (or, more specifically, Space Empires IV with a customized version of the Eclipse Mod), I focus on research, improving my research facilities and building massive research fleets, so that I have a boatload of research and can pick and choose high-level research projects while everyone else is still struggling with fusion power. I generally max out the most powerful weapons, shields, and construction technologies, so that as soon as someone declares war on me, I just wormhole-jump into their home system and capture their planets with a single troop transport (which is capable of both blowing their entire fleet away by itself and landing hundreds of giant mechs that take out the planetary militia in a couple combat turns). I guess this style of play just automatically translates into RPGs that let you increase the rate at which you generate experience, although level caps tend to make that not worthwhile, like in Fallout 3/New Vegas; there, I always ignore the perks that give increased EXP generation, because there are a finite number of perks you can take before your character hits max level, and some are quite a bit better than a minor increase in EXP gain that will become meaningless when your character is maxed out anyway. On the other hand, taking Intelligence is highly useful in FO3/FNV because it increases the number of skill points you get per level, which allows you to max out your skills before any other character can. On the other hand, in FO3, at least, there are so many skill books out there, that you can basically reach 80 in all skills solely through leveling and then artificially raise all skills to 100. Actually, you can probably do it with even lower skills, like 70 or something... oh well, not important.
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Death Knight 12 years ago
Spoken true. The problem with fallout 1 and 2 (and tactics) was that swift learner was supposed to be a great feat for exp to take at level 3, yet after testing and many people's frustration, its actually the worst possible feat you could take in a roleplaying game. Not only is 5% experience bad, ive tested it and it only applies to when you use skills, not even when you get kill exp, which really really sucks.
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Death Knight 12 years ago
Hmm...I have been playing the game with the retreat for some time now and im not sure if its working any. Maybe its a level based effect as it seemed that the enemies were stunned from it. Is retreat and its master form a level based stun thing because as it stands im beginning to think it stuns only with low level monsters. I dont think you need a shield to activate it, or at least i hope you dont.
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Anne 12 years ago
Thanks for all the comments and info Death Knight! We're actually thinking about some tuning for some of the attributes, so it's very useful to hear your impressions on them.

Death Knight said:
Hmm...I have been playing the game with the retreat for some time now and im not sure if its working any. Maybe its a level based effect as it seemed that the enemies were stunned from it. Is retreat and its master form a level based stun thing because as it stands im beginning to think it stuns only with low level monsters. I dont think you need a shield to activate it, or at least i hope you dont.

That sounds interesting. The stun feature of retreat is supposed to work with all the creatures you face (don't know about the major bosses, but you haven't seen any of them yet). Do you remember where or against who, it was that it didn't work?

Oh, and if you find some bugs or problems in-game, that would benefit from sending a printscreen (or knowing the exact location, etc), have you noticed that we also have a feedback button at the lower right corner of the game? That's a really easy way to send short feedback, and screens directly to Ville. Could be useful for example in the given situation where the retreat didn't work for you.
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Death Knight 12 years ago
The goblin/lizards at the smithy quest with the brother is where i tested the stun. Im not sure if you have to use a shield to get it to work though but i dont think so. As long as you dont need a shield in case i want to use a twohanded weapon (if there are any). I also had a crash at the shipwreck mod as soon as i enter the portal with the other guy.

Oh yeah and will it be possible for each weapon to have their own weapon speed. So for example daggers are the fastest, then swords then blunt weapons, etc. That way you dont have 1 weapon to be the endall weapon.

Edit-I just tried the game over with any enemies and it seems that even when you cast it right in front of the monsters, the stun affect either only lasts 1 second, or it gets broken from hitting that monster. Im going to go with that it doesnt get on them because i dont have a shield. Its strange because i didnt really want to use a shield. I dont know if there are any twohanded weapons in the game, but im sure sword/shield isnt the only way to go.

Edited 12 years ago
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ChuckV 12 years ago
I have been trying a few things with the retreat skill:

- Having a shield doesn't matter.(Well, I have a shield in my inventory but it doesn't matter if I am wielding it so I am going to guess it just doesn't matter)
- The skill will stun the enemies but they will only remain stunned if you run away from them (Contrarily to the shield bash skill). If you keep fighting them, the enemies keep on fighting too.
- If you use the skill and run away immediately, the enemies will just stand there; Also, I have gotten my follower to hit them once before leaving and they just stood there, but I am not sure to what extent that may or may not "un-stun" them if you try to exploit it.

As an aside: I think it is just a great idea to have the game pause the fight when you are about to die. People who like it more hardcore would certainly disagree, so making it optional could be a compromise.
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MageKing17 12 years ago
ChuckV said:
As an aside: I think it is just a great idea to have the game pause the fight when you are about to die. People who like it more hardcore would certainly disagree, so making it optional could be a compromise.
I dunno; I generally think of myself as being more on the "hardcore" side of things, and I think the pause-before-death thing is awesome. Still, making things optional rarely hurts.
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Death Knight 12 years ago
ChuckV said:
I have been trying a few things with the retreat skill:

- Having a shield doesn't matter.(Well, I have a shield in my inventory but it doesn't matter if I am wielding it so I am going to guess it just doesn't matter)
- The skill will stun the enemies but they will only remain stunned if you run away from them (Contrarily to the shield bash skill). If you keep fighting them, the enemies keep on fighting too.
- If you use the skill and run away immediately, the enemies will just stand there; Also, I have gotten my follower to hit them once before leaving and they just stood there, but I am not sure to what extent that may or may not "un-stun" them if you try to exploit it.

As an aside: I think it is just a great idea to have the game pause the fight when you are about to die. People who like it more hardcore would certainly disagree, so making it optional could be a compromise.

This seems to be the problem that i have with the skill. Its only useful with retreating when it states that it stuns all enemies. If it were made to be useful, it would be that you can be used to pick off large groups without the need for aoes. With a high strength and a decent agility, you could do that. The problem with retreat is that what it does and what it really does are not the same thing.
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ville 12 years ago
You're right, there seems to be a bug with the retreat skill. I'll have a look into it before releasing the next version. Thanks for letting me know! My aim for the retreat skill is for you to get a good chance of getting away when enemies are just about to get you and you're all out of health potions. I haven't intended it to be a hit and run technique, maybe a longer cooldown time will help with that.

Thanks for your tests with the stat points Death Knight, it'll come in handy when I fine-tune the game balance! My aim is obviously to make all the points equal in usefulness, but it's a long road with everything affecting everything.

I generally feel that the pause before dying is a usability thing - even a hard core player would want to know when he's about to die. I don't think many derive fun from the fact that they missed the empty health bar and the red haze before gulping a health potion.
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ville 12 years ago
I've decided that the Retreat skill was too effective when repaired. I'm going to replace it with an item called Reverse Ooz Powder that makes you run faster, but doesn't stun anyone. It's more effective than the Retreat skill in that it allows you to run for 10 seconds, outrunning pretty much anything, allowing nice hit and run strategies, and it's more versatile since you can use it outside battle as well (but then you also have the quick travel option). The powerful effect is balanced by the fact that there's a limited amount of these items around - though you can craft more if you need to. It was a hard decision, but I'm hoping it was for the better...

Now I need a good replacement for the Retreat skill in the defense talent branch. Any ideas?
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Death Knight 12 years ago
Well...you could instead of causing enemies to be stunned, you could add a shield sweep effect. That would be a debuff that enemies around a certain area have their agility decreased (slowing their run/walk speed and also their strength causing you to either run or pick off some of the weakened foes. It wont be devastating but it will be good for the times when you need all the help you can get. You could even make the master level a stronger version of that, with strength, agility, and constitution weakened and to a more potent extent.

I dont know, you dont want to use something that is too powerful like the previous one, but something like this might be good as it wont be a devastating move, but when you use it, it can aid you a bit. The only reason i dont like the run away thing is that shield users dont usually run away. They can, but a shield user would be much more likely to do a shield sweep such as this, ensnaring foes, then finishing them with an aoe. I dont know. Ill think of something else when i can.
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ville 12 years ago
That sweeping motion thing got me into thinking about some sort of an extra magical blade that sweeps and dances around you and protects you. It sounds so cool that it would have to be the topmost defence skill, I'd have to give the current ones one level earlier.
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Death Knight 12 years ago
Well you figure that the left column is about wiping enemies out whereas the middle column is more about protection and staying alive. It kind of makes me wonder are there 2handed weapons in the game? If not then the middle column is almost necessary somewhat.
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ville 12 years ago
The bows used to be two handed, but I decided against that. But I do have one particularly nice two handed war axe coming along, it'll come a bit later in the game.
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Death Knight 12 years ago
1#-I have a request for the endresult of the game. I had a notion to try a mod/scenario and decided to do it. When i got to it, i found that i had to make a new character. Is there any possibility that you can take one char and bring it to the next or would that be too hard to implement? The only reason i ask is it would add to the character's viability. I found that blades of avernum did this and it worked fairly well.

2#-The only thing i noticed was that this might complicate how high a character level should be? Will there be a max level to encourage not maxing out all trees? I hope so as it will allow for trying out new and different characters
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ville 12 years ago
1: I think you definitely should be able to bring a character to Driftmoon 2, if that's what you mean. I don't have any plans for a sequel yet, but I always love getting to use my previous characters. Especially if you get to keep some weird and mysterious item, only to find out what it really does in the sequel.

2: My purpose is that you won't be able to get enough levels during the game to get all the talents. Still, it might be possible to do something clever and reach that, I just don't know how you could do that yet. I am not planning a leveling cap, I always dislike those as a gamer. And of course, for now how much xp you need to get each level has been thrown out of my hat, so expect those to change a bit as I get to tune the game.

Edited 12 years ago
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Amarth 12 years ago
I think #1 is about making a character in one mod and using it in another? If so, that seems kinda hard to me, for example because items you pick up in one mod might not even exist in another mod.

I haven't played Blades of Avernum, but I think the scenarios in that game are a lot more rigid. Driftmoon gives quite a lot of freedom to modders.
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MageKing17 12 years ago
ville said:
1: I think you definitely should be able to bring a character to Driftmoon 2, if that's what you mean. I don't have any plans for a sequel yet, but I always love getting to use my previous characters. Especially if you get to keep some weird and mysterious item, only to find out what it really does in the sequel.
I loved the GBA Golden Sun games. I even endured writing down the long-ass Gold password so that I could get the Iris summon (since I was playing on a DS, which doesn't let you use GBA link cables). I really need to get the DS one and see if it's as good as the GBA games...

Amarth said:
I think #1 is about making a character in one mod and using it in another? If so, that seems kinda hard to me, for example because items you pick up in one mod might not even exist in another mod.
...I suddenly want to see a game where this can happen. I realize this would be hard/impossible in Driftmoon, but this idea appeals to me for some reason.
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ville 12 years ago
MageKing17 said:
Amarth said:
I think #1 is about making a character in one mod and using it in another? If so, that seems kinda hard to me, for example because items you pick up in one mod might not even exist in another mod.
...I suddenly want to see a game where this can happen. I realize this would be hard/impossible in Driftmoon, but this idea appeals to me for some reason.

That was actually one of my ideas for Driftmoon modding about a year ago. The idea was that there would be a series of islands you could get to - and each island would be a map to the main game people have made. I didn't work on it further because the game was still undergoing heavy changes back then, and well, it would wreck the game balance obviously as people made maps where you could get any items and experience you wanted. But I'm still thinking about the idea, maybe open up a competition to get your map in the game if enough people are interested.
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