Some new ideas from playing some more.

[udm]

While playing, I had 4 ideas (regarding town totems, invasions and pacing of the game):

1) Obelisks, such as Giant or Holy Shield Obelisks, having infinite uses, or at least a larger number of uses than just 1. I've always felt that quests involving building Obelisks are somewhat redundant, as the XP gain is rarely high to reward the risk involved, and the totems themselves are a 1-time use, and last only a minute. I never bother with these quests if they are out of the way. I only speak for myself though, but I personally feel that these quests add to tedium.

2) Town totem quests are great, since totems are supposed to defend the town against impending attacks. However, the placings are usually strange and not very strategic, so it often still ends up falling on the player to run back to save the town. 95% of the worlds I've had with Totem quests, I've never had my Totem fire a single shot before I took out the Assassin.

If I have a suggestion to make regarding this, it would be to have totems be placed at the centre of the town, and when there are attacks, everybody rushes to that spot and spreads out (but remains around that area) to fend for the town.

Furthermore, I'd like to propose greater frequency of totem quests. With more totem quests, too, it'd be possible to have larger scale invasions. Which brings me to the next point:

3) Town attacks are too tame. Assassin quests are okay, but Assassins are too easy to take down. Assassins having Champion henchmen sounds like fun. Regarding invasions (with Dimension Gates), they're also somewhat too tame. There are too few creatures, yet OTOH townspeople die quickly because they can't take a lot of damage. My idea is to have townspeople HP increased so they can sustain longer; this facilitates being able to increase the scale of the invasion - since townspeople have higher HP, they don't die so easily, and thus having more invading creatures evens the odds. It also makes the fights seem more epic, rather than just "oh good you've returned to our town, now complete that quest by killing all the invading creatures and turn it in."

I can foresee some cool scenarios from this. For example, you see 3 Trapping Broods harassing your Armorsmith, and you know he is selling Ice Heart; on the other hand, 5 Trapping Broods are going to kill your Warmaster and Steward, and if they die, you have 5 quests that you can't turn in. You can throw them each a potion, since they're all in your view, but they're still pretty far apart from one another. Each second you waste is precious. What's your plan, hero?

4) Add on option to increase pacing of the game for those of us who are masochistic maniacs. Will it be possible for such an option, that decreases the timing of the quests, as well as add more invasions, having bosses train more disciples and just make the game hell of a lot crazier to play? I still find myself taking my own sweet time sometimes. I can even afford to go to the toilet without pausing the game, knowing that the monster factions aren't going to war anytime soon or sending up an Assassin.