Poll: What would you like in a Din's Curse Expansion?

[graffen69]

1: Overland Content
2: More Classes (ex. Monk, Bard*)
3: Socketing (for Gear, and mebbe also Skill Socketing a la CoH**)
4: More Difference between each difficulty (Tilesets, Quests, Gear etc.)
5: Item crafting (Best Itemcrafting ive seen was in Hellgate London although the game itself was a huge dissapointment)
6: More Quests (Difficulty related, Class Quests which could yield Class Sets)
7: New Tilesets

* Been working some of my own for an idea to a Dins Curse Bard. Ill put up an early draft on the forum when i fleshed it out a bit more.

** For those knowing nutting bout CoH (City of Heroes) Skill Socketing system give a moment to try and explain. Each skill has 6 sockets that can be socketed using enchantments. Enchantment range from +% Damage, +% Defense, -% reuse Time to +% Att Speed and so on.
Enchantments in themselves are weak at early levels but raise as high as +30% at max levels. Max for enchantment bonus for any skill is +90% so theres no point putting more then 3 +30% at max level, although at earlier levels when the % aint that high it still is.
Enchantments in themselves can be common, rare, uncommon and Unique. There are also set enchantments that gain an additional bonus for every part of that set beyond 1. Set Enchantments can also be common, uncommon, rare and unique.
Those are roughly the basics. Ofc it has to be adjusted to DC but just wanted to give an example. As a interesting side note, i´ve read Diablo 3 will be using something similair to CoH´s Skill Socketing System.

[DeathKnight1728]

Graffen69 said:

1: Overland Content
2: More Classes (ex. Monk, Bard*)
3: Socketing (for Gear, and mebbe also Skill Socketing a la CoH**)
4: More Difference between each difficulty (Tilesets, Quests, Gear etc.)
5: Item crafting (Best Itemcrafting ive seen was in Hellgate London although the game itself was a huge dissapointment)
6: More Quests (Difficulty related, Class Quests which could yield Class Sets)
7: New Tilesets


I like your ideas. The only question i have is this. My first choice for a character was a monk. However, i will say that i also thought of a bard. The reason i never thought to mention the bard is because i dont know how a soldak game would implement that class. I've really liked the bard in other rpgs like Baldurs Gate 2, but i dont know what to come up with if they were ever to think about that class in Din's. I dont know where to start. Just my thoughts on that.

[udm]

A bard could be a very good team support class, with all skills purely on the support side, including stat buffing abilities, health boosts etc.

[graffen69]

DeathKnight1728 wrote

The reason i never thought to mention the bard is because i dont know how a soldak game would implement that class. I've really liked the bard in other rpgs like Baldurs Gate 2, but i dont know what to come up with if they were ever to think about that class in Din's. I dont know where to start.

Well, the Bard ive been working on is somewhat of a remake of the mmorpg EQ´s (Everquest 1) Bard spiced up with some D&D (pen & paper rpg Dungeons and Dragons) ideas. In the original game (EQ) the Bard is a unique class with his song twisting ability which requires a lot of micromanagement to be effective in groups. I always had a soft spot for Bards although i severally lacked the skill to play one in Groups. I had a blast soloing one though through early to mid levels when EQ was THE mmorpg (looong before WoW kiddos ). The Bards uniqueness always made them a very appealing class to me and i´ve been playing D&D for some 25+ years, since 1st edition (yup, im definitely an old geek loving every aspect of games and gaming), and i thaught the 2nd ed D&D Bard had a nice combo of spells and D&D 3rd ed some decent Skills. The first problem that arouse was trying to overcome the fact that theres no Cha (Charisma) stat in Dins Curse, since the whole concept of a Bard builds around Cha. But so be it, no Char means more points to put in other stats. Mebbe Soldak will consider putting Cha in an expansion or mebbe it just dosent fit in. Whichever, im building a version not using Cha and instead focusing more on Dex & Int (or mebbe Dex & Spi).

So i´ve been playing around with how the Bard could become a balanced Class in a game like Din´s Curse and trying to downplay the micromanagement required from EQ and especially focusing at making skills that work well on their own for the Bard as he is, as well as for playing any of the Bard trees as a Hybrid. This is the big challange, making the skills work well on each tree alone without getting over powerful and at the same time making unique skills that really fits a Bard AND works well with other Hybrid Classes.
So far ive come up with some 3 potential skill trees, some basic skills as well as some regular skills for each tree; Spellsword (Melee and Offensive Spells) Charmer (Defense and Controltype Spells) and Minstrel (Songs).


Spellsword
His Melee skills are focused on passive counter attacks and fast cast offensive spells. Therefore prolly mix best with a hybrid thats either lets him use heavier armor for protection, but can also work well if you want to play a really offensive Hybrid like an Assassin, a Gladiator or even a Weaponmaster specalizing in Swords would make an interesting combo.

Charmer
His Defensive skills are mostly based on passive avoidance and parrying skills that work well with hybrid classes using light armor such as Cloth or Leather. The Charmer´s focus lies in Control type Spells that lets him mesmerize mobs and also use one mob as a Pet. As an opposite to the necromancers Raise-type of spells this pet is very much alive and theres always a chance that this Charm type of spells loose hold based on skill level. Hybrid classes that would work well in conjunction with a Charmer are basically any cloth or leather user like Trickster, Hunter, Healer and most kind of spell casters.

Minstrel
The Bards Uniqueness is his ability to twist songs. He can have up to 3 songs playing at any one time and they all affect any close-by group member (as well as pets & NPC´s). The number of songs he can twist at any given time are are uniqly tied with his Melee & Defense Skills. As such the Bard can play up to 3 songs if played as a single class and 2 songs if played as a hybrid. His songs have a broad range of usefulness from moving faster, increased HP/Mana Reg, increased Att Speed and even increased Cast speed and as such the Minstrel tree is his most versatile and can be combined with a lot of hybrid classes.

Note on Songs: Once started the songs stays active, working in ”the background” much like the Gladiators Focus-line skills and have the same limitations, but have an aura affect that affects the entire group, group pets and nearby NPC´s (can you dig rescue missions where they always seem to die just before u can get to them? Put on the HP song). As such they could be considered passive but needs to be triggered. Songs dont cost Mana.

I still got plenty of adjusting to do for all 3 trees, but i will put it out on the forum once i fleshed it out a bit more.
Feel Free to comment.

[Shadow]

A bard would be interesting. I think if we did a bard, I would make it spirit based. Charisma would make more sense, but it would be pretty useless for everyone else so it isn't something that is likely to get added.

[Roswitha]

@graffen69. Wow. That's a whole lot of work.

I would like to see an overland adventure that connects the towns, but doesn't shrink the dungeons. I'm thinking of Diablo II which added overland but shrunk the dungeons from 15 levels to 3. I like the DC dungeons the size that they are.

[Jorlen]

It's true that Hellgate had a really nice item crafting system.

Super simple. Basically, instead of selling items, you could dismantle them for components. The rarer the item, the more pieces you'd get (and better pieces). Once you're in a town area, vendors have random yet mostly very powerful items you can craft, and all you need to craft them is X amount of component pieces. Some of the better gear took LOTS of components, so you had to save up for them bigtime. It was so simple, yet so effective and balanced.

Something like that would be awesome

So to piece it all together, I'd love to see:

- Another class would be awesome (the bard / monk ideas sound neat. Monk could feing death, while he's down all monsters ingore him, kind of like an "oh sh!t" switch. Yep, I love EQ.).

- Outdoor stuff (maybe linking towns together with optional quests within)

- More prefix / suffix effects in itemization, specifically towards weapons

- Socketing and / or crafting system (or lite crafting as mentioned above)

- More dungeon types / tiles and afew new enemy types can't hurt

- New quest types with interesting quest rewards

- More trap types

- NPC henchman as companions (for hire or recruitable via quest for their loyalty)

[DeathKnight1728]

I'm liking the ideas, plus their coming from a fellow fan of d and d stuff

I think that the 2nd edition captured it the best. Besides that, i think that a bard might be a better class than a monk even for Din's.The only thing is you could do things a little bit differently.

1) A Blade (or troubadour) would work as a cool name for the fighter side. The fighter side would need its skill attacks to be precise and quick all at the same time. Kind of like the rogue. The reason is that bards were known to be very showy and entertaining, yet extremely precise too. This class should have a few spells, but not many as the fighter side of a bard is supposed to be specialized in fighting. The reasoning is that otherwise you have a class that has 3 classes that major in spellcasting, when in reality the bard is all 3. Other than that, i like the idea for the fighter side.

2)I like everything about the charmer. The only thing is it would be cool if their were some kind of thief type skills that turn creatures against each other, I'm thinking-make this class the one man-commando with him creating his own monster battles which he gets exp for when they die. That way he is a sneaky guy, which fits the thief aspect well. Also maybe change the name to deceiver.

3) The minstrel should just be able to use 1 song, otherwise it would be unfair if you have 3 songs working at the same time.

That's just what i think would go well with your suggestion. Hopefully, they make a class like that...it would be sick!

[barsoomian]

This is the first time I've posted, so sorry for any netiquette issues. I'm (unfortunately, given that I have both a job and family ...) a bit addicted to DC -- I'm old enough not to be very good (no fast twitch responses left), but I did want to toss in a thought or two about classes for a possible expansion:

Enchanter? focusing on making or charming things
Specialties could be alchemist (create bombs, potions, etc.), charmer (bad name, I know, but the idea is powers that bring a monster over to your side), and loremaster (creates runes on self/items that maybe mimic the obelisks)

Mystic? pulling this from old D&D version of monk and new one
Specialties of monk (unarmed, unarmored combat), mentalist (telekinesis, pyrokinesis, etc.), and oracle (bonuses in combat from seeing future, finding specific things on map)

No idea if any of this interests people or (especially) if they're even plausible in game terms.

Looking forward to any expansion, as I love the game (all the combinations of classes are just what I like).

[Kruztee]

Welcome to the forums barsooiam!

Don't worry, you're not the only "mature aged gamer" around here The good thing about DC is that thoughtful play will (most of the time) get you a lot further than twitchy reflexes. Actually, Shadow is no spring chicken himself.

I'm still pretty good at most games, but since I've hit my 40's I don't compete as well in things like online FPS games and such. But I can still beat the kids a lot of the time in strategy games. Din's Curse is a good middle ground - and of course it's fairly non-competitive anyway.

Nice suggestions too.