An old gamers wishes...

[Stormy Fairweather]

Allow me to post a few things that I think the 'perfect' action RPG needs.

- The masteries system from TQ (with more of course) and an expansion on the classes. That is, abilities and traits gained when you gain your class. And mebbe another page for universal skills available to everyone.

- Identifying items that is relevent and interesting. In most games IDing things is just a chore, and TQ was great in not having it. But if it could be made relevent... for instance if you could 'mostly' ID gear you find based on its relative power, and pay someone to confirm it 'if you wish.' Having to be wary of cursed items and decideing whether you need to pay a token sum to be sure to avoid a curse that is likely to be far more costly to remove will make IDing relevent.

- Incresed monster info with kills. The first diablo had it, I thought it was real cool, and not ONE action RPG since featured it. The idea is simple, the more of a particular moster you have slain, the more you are likely to know about them, maybe even gaining a bonus vs them after enough kills.

- Loot. This one is easy, you guys already have it. The tier system and monster equip in TQ was the perfect loot system imho. And worked great with the relic and charms, and made it alot more strategic. (Use this green with a charm, or this purple without?)

-PC release. Most serious gamers use PC's. I, for one, will likely never buy a new video game console, but will buy more computers.

There are the major ones I can think of just now. Off to play some more TQ.

PS- Add an option in the game to disable rubber banding if you folks are sticking that feature in.

[yerkyerk]

I'm not sure about ID'ing - the way proposed I still think it's a chore. If it's relevant and fun, I'm in, but if it's just a pointless model that only slows playing the game (e.g. TL, Diablo), I'm against it.
I like the idea of learning about monsters. I also proposed the idea somewhere that you'd be more efficient against monsters that you know well, but apparantly most people didn't like that particular part.
GD is gonna be PC-only.
About loot I have a lot to say actually - so not going to do that here. I do hope that multiplayer gets a seperate loot system though...

I too would like an option to disable rubberbanding. Also, an option to increase game performance 500% without any visible impact on graphics would be great as well

[Steerpike]

"- Incresed monster info with kills. The first diablo had it, I thought it was real cool, and not ONE action RPG since featured it. The idea is simple, the more of a particular moster you have slain, the more you are likely to know about them, maybe even gaining a bonus vs them after enough kills."

Sacred II sort of had something along those lines - the more you fought a type of enemy (humanoid, elf, etc) the better bonus you got at hitting that enemy type. This made the more common monsters easier to defeat in the long run, as you'd encounter so many of them.

[Hikari]

I agree that having to ID everything you find for no reason is juts a pointless chore, and am very much in favour of TQ's system, but I also think there are a couple of good ways to use identifying items. I had a couple of thoughts that might be interesting.

1 - Cursed items
Pretty much the point of IDing to begin with. All the mods on randomly generated loot would be visible, but everything has a small chance to have a hidden penalty, possibly related to one of it's positive effects. For example, a piece of armour that has +10 dexterity might have a chance of also giving -2 strength. That way you'd know how good something is straight away, and only have to ID things you actually intend to use, just to make sure. Then it would just be a case of going to an NPC in a town to get any curses removed.
As long as the penalties were small enough, someone who can't be bothered with IDing/uncursing could just ignore them, but all together they could still have some bad effects if you wear too many cursed things at once.
Maybe even add a small side quest that grants the player some sort of ability to detect cursed items as a reward.
Of course, vendors don't sell cursed items, which gives them more use as a source of reliable items.

2 - This sword once belonged to...
When the player first picks up a unique item, they don't know what it is, only that it looks different to most other things that they've found. They would probably have some good effects straight away, so you could still pick it up and use it, but to unlock it's full powers, you would need to take it to a historian or scholar NPC who could tell you exactly what it is, making it's better enhancments available, possibly at the cost of losing some of the effects from it's unidentified version.


Yes, I did start thinking about it a bit too much...

[ASYLUM101]

@Hikari, that's the only method I think IDing should work. IDing EVERYTHING, is stupid. IDing HALF the items, is stupid. Now, if you had some extremely powerful weapons, those deserve IDing. The cursed stuff isn't necessary, but it's cool. I'll go back to my reference with PSO. That game had REALLY good items the only ones that were identifiable. They had a special loot container and everything. It was always exciting to see the big RED box filled with ?????? and then rushing it back to the identifier to find out how awesome it was. One of the few games that actually HAD awesome uniques...

[yerkyerk]

But if ID'ing simply means a trip back and forth to town, it'd still be a chore. Ofcourse you could work around that by implementing such things as ID shrines (or tome pedestals or something).

[Poet of the Fall]

I think the only way IDing stuff would make sense if it was for unique items only and if it was really, really costly for higher level items, to the point where you would think thrice before getting an item identified.

You find that bow, level 999zomg, it's shiny, it's big, it's probably kicking ***, but you are a melee hero and thus sell it right away for much less gold than it might be worth because it would have cost you 1/3 of your 2460973569 gold pieces and another unique item or some rare ingredient of minimum level 666 on top ("processing fee" - there's just no honesty anymore) to ID it.

On the other hand if you find that bow as a ranger, you drop that insane amount of gold, you give that ******* greedy ID guy your beloved unique helmet too (while you secretly hope he gets a really bad headache and stinky feet) because you haven't found a golden flower yet (alternative fee) and get the most insanely powerful ranged weapon you've ever seen *drool*. Now you just need to go find a good helmet again...

[Ansive]

Powerful cool stuff, deserves some kind of IDing... maybe to unlock all it's power. The need to identify everything that's not white or gray in Diablo isn't really fun.

Cursed items might also be fun. You could only remove them in town... for cash.

[macroidtoe]

I suppose I have a somewhat different definition of "Action" RPG than what is commonly used with regards to PC games. Games like Titan Quest/Diablo/etc. strike me as being more like really complicated single-unit RTS games or a real-time Roguelike. Not saying that's bad or anything, but the style of combat doesn't strike me as particularly "actiony," even if it is understandably more actiony than turn-based stuff.

Something like Oblivion, for example, strikes me as being more like an "Action RPG," although strangely you never seem to see it described as such. So I guess for me, the question of the perfect "Action RPG" and the perfect "Diablo-like RPG" are completely different things.

Of course, on the reverse side of things, the Japanese call this an "Action RPG," when it's really just a pure Action game. (Although again, not saying that's bad, since it's actually a ****ed good Action game.) It might be kind of interesting to see that sort of insane fast-paced combat combined with a more complex Diablo-like class/skill/loot structure. I don't know that it would be my perfect Action RPG, but it would certainly be an interesting experiment (although it may be too radical a departure for some).

[Coincident]

I don't see any way that ID'ing items can be enjoyable. Even only on powerful items: in the late game it's something repetitive that you have to repeat for several items along the game since you're so stashed with gold anyway that you don't care how much it costs anymore.


But your idea of "learning" about the monsters when you've killed a certain number of them could be interesting - IF the info you get about the monster can be directly used by the player.
Just increasing your attack rate automatically for having killed many monsters of a same type is kinda dull, since you will end up forgetting that was ever implemented.
However, if the game provides useful tactical info, like the monster's magic resistances, weaknesses, armor values, etc, the player would increase his effectiveness by choosing which kind of attacks he should use, or what kind of damage he should expect/resist to deal against that monster.

After that, all you need to complete the circle is a "monster-pedia" to allow the player to consult known monsters and their stats. That would not only give valuable info but also give players a feeling of reward for having completed the monster-pedia.

But maybe I'm just asking too much :P