Next game thoughts

[Shadow]

I still don't know what we are going to work on next and we still have a lot to do for Kivi's Underworld, but I thought I would reveal some of my thoughts about the next game. Here's a few of the possibilities that I'm thinking about at the moment and some thoughts about each of them.

Another Kivi adventure - this isn't too likely this soon after Kivi shipped in the first place, but it is possible. This really depends on how well Kivi sells early on and possibly what happens with user mods.

A Depths of Peril expansion - I have a lot of ideas stored away for this. This would make a lot more sense now then when we started working on Kivi. I also expect this to be one of the favorite ideas just because most people that are bound to read this are here because of DoP.

A hardcore dungeon crawl - I don't necessarily mean permadeath type of hardcore or anything, just not casual like Kivi. I'm thinking something between Kivi and DoP. Complex classes, tons of items, and a random, dynamic world like DoP, but have secrets, traps, and the moddability of Kivi.

Turn based, tactical combat RPG - I personally like turn based combat and being able to plan out my attacks. These type of games are pretty rare these days, which makes me sad. That probably sounds weird considering we have done 2 action games in a row.

Multiplayer of some sort - I would still like to do some kind of multiplayer support one of these days. Both of our games would be really cool to play in multiplayer. Kivi would be a lot easier to support multiplayer in though.

I do have a bunch more game concepts that I would like to do some day, but at this point in time these are probably the most likely. I even have a cool racing game concept that would be fun to make.

So what are everyone's thoughts?

[Jorn Ironborn]

My 2 cents:

A "hardcore dungeon crawl," a la Kivi w/ the full DoP character complexity, would be fantastic - just what I want.

If you could combine this with a turn based tactical RPG system (I'm thinking Fallout 1 and 2, maybe mixed w/ Fallout Tactics or the original X-COM style) it would be the best of all possible worlds for me.

Of course, I may be representative of a very small demographic of players who want turn-based hardcore tactical story-heavy RPGs (on a Mac laptop, no less!), so take my opinion for what it's worth.

[scragar]

I'm a big fan of strategy and RPGs, I'd love to see something similar to the origional X-COM game like Jorn Ironborn said, I still play the origional from time to time(on the PSx or via dosbox, my computer is way too powerfull to run it directly or via wine, scrolling is impossible :P).

The only request I have for if you are doing a strategy though, is for a few options regarding difficulty, I love fighting from an advantagious possition(maybe starting off with slightly more resources or something) against a very smart, very chalanging foe, yet that is rarely an option in most strategies(unless you cheat or hack it, neither of which are very nice), apparantly easy medium and hard cannot be made into those same options for various settings(AI, initial resources, enviromental factors?). Anyway, I don't want to dictate how you should make your game, this is just my opinion, ignore me if you like.

[GeorgiaBoy]

<babble mode on:>

My vote (for what it is worth) is for a "hardcore dungeon crawl". My perception is that most people were attracted to DoP as a better Diablo II alternative and later came to love the depth that DoP has. My suggestions are as follows:

1) Keep the DoP theme, but in a significantly larger world with a mixture of pre-planned and random maps. As for the map editor, a large majority of us do not use 3dmax, so making map objects isn't the easiest. I would suggest the current 2-d map with 'non-walkable' areas.

2) Toggle victory conditions so the defeat of the covenants is optional for victory in the game. As another option, have the death of monster, whatever other quest objectives to satisfy the game victory conditions.

3) DoP has a great WoW-like interface...please keep it. I am one of the few people on earth that does not play WoW since it has a monthly fee. However, I love the content. I would pay $100 for a multiplayer moddable WoW-like game (local LAN), but obviously, not as large, althought Sacred 2 is pretty big. It is amazing how much one person can do (hint, hint, Shadow), but even then, there are limits...

I could go on, and if anybody cares, this is a link to my other ramblings:

http://www.soldak.com/forums/showthread.php?t=1009

<babble mode off>

Thanks for reading!

GB

[torikamal]

Head and shoulders, I would be in favor of a hardcore dungeon crawl game. I am really excited for the modding possibilities that Kivi is presenting, so if that could be taken into account as well, it would be very cool.

I may be unique in my feeling that MMORPG's eventually make me lose interest because I never really feel like what I'm doing impacts the world--you do a sweet quest and kill this crazy difficult boss, and then ten minutes later he respawns for somebody else to kill. Although this is necessary in an MMO, it really kills the immersion, which is why I always tend to put a lot more time into single player games--when you kill the boss, he's dead and you have forever changed the world (until you format), but you get the idea.

1) Keep the dynamic world of DoP
2) More interaction with NPC's
3) Keep modability of Kivi
4) Complex character skill trees are cool
5) More interactive environments...

Yikes, I didn't even mean to make a post. I will follow up later.

[DetlevH]

A hardcore dungeon crawl with a complex story from Adventure to Adventure told as we see in Age of Empires is my favourit.

I like to destroy the environment, just have a look on the Diablo 3 website, they have many cool ideas, not to mean that you should steal their ideas

[SharpCarlos]

Wow, seems like everybody's already leaning the same way as me: hard core dungeon crawl.

Pretty much my ONLY complaint with DoP (and it's more a personal preference thing than a complaint) is that the time pressure created by the covenant system distracted me from the fun of exploring, or of poring over all my awesome loot. So, a PURE dungeon crawl, along with all the other elements that DoP did so well (randomization, etc.), would be a blast.

Second place: multiplayer DoP would be pretty amazing. I've got a friend I play competitive strategy games and cooperative RPGs with, and DoP would be BOTH, but in nice bite sized chunks (he and I haven't finished an RPG in years).

But a turn based tactical strategy game wouldn't exactly get a frown out of me either.

[GeorgiaBoy]

@ Shadow--How about a poll for wanted features, etc.?

GB

[Jorn Ironborn]

Pretty much my ONLY complaint with DoP . . . is that the time pressure . . . .

Ditto. But then, I'm not a fan of real-time strategy games - too much pressure! I prefer to take my sweet time.

[Delve]

Originally Posted by Shadow

A Depths of Peril expansion - I have a lot of ideas stored away for this. This would make a lot more sense now then when we started working on Kivi. I also expect this to be one of the favorite ideas just because most people that are bound to read this are here because of DoP.

A hardcore dungeon crawl - I don't necessarily mean permadeath type of hardcore or anything, just not casual like Kivi. I'm thinking something between Kivi and DoP. Complex classes, tons of items, and a random, dynamic world like DoP, but have secrets, traps, and the moddability of Kivi.

Turn based, tactical combat RPG - I personally like turn based combat and being able to plan out my attacks. These type of games are pretty rare these days, which makes me sad. That probably sounds weird considering we have done 2 action games in a row.

Yes please.
I could see all three of these thoughts as a mashup. Export your DoP character into the new game, recruit some 'heroes' from the escapees that were hinted at in DoP and go on an excursion into the underworld to strike back at the dark elf deity from the same base camp (only with you in charge of the camp now of course). You'd have to fiddle with the skills to fit it into a tactical format, but if you scale the combat challenges against the character then importing shouldn't be a big problem. Expand the level cap to 200 or something to allow imported characters to grow. I think there's potential there.

Or for the sake of keeping that setting clean you could go for something tangential to DoP or a different setting entirely. Mainly I'd love to see some hardcore dungeon crawling and tactical combat. Something like a return to Wizardry 8 would really fill a hole in my life. Man do I love that game.

Personally I'm not terribly interested in a rehashing of DoP. It would take quite a feature overhaul to make that interesting to me. It's a great game and I love it, but that itch is still scratched at the moment.